Malleus Maleficarum
by TheCheeryForgottenUmbrella
Summary: There is just more than some black cat going around when your life comes crashing down onto you. Contains Art/Rob friendship. Rated M to be safe.
1. The First Lamppost

Hello. I wanted to keep A/N short. I really did. But it's 4 am and I really need to whine about it.

This is kind of sort of my first story here. You don't have to be nice to me because of that. English isn't this little fangirl's native language so it would be greatly, greatly appreciated if you let me know of grammar errors etc. you happen to spot. Constructive critism is always welcome for this little fangirl really wants to improve, flames too but please state your reason for flaming...

Brain can not no sentence. It's 4 am. Did I mention it's 4 am?

Disclaimer : Don't own YJ, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ring Around the Rosie.

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><p><em>I. The First Lamppost<em>

_"...ring-a-ring-a-roses."_

Artemis Crock could recognize danger in any situation, under any circumstance. Her life was, in a way she could not name, etched by everything and anything threatening the very moment she was born.

Yes, Artemis Crock knew danger, she knew it by smell, sight and taste, by its full name and birthplace, by that delightful rush of adrenaline, drops of sweat, frozen seconds-it was her life. Her _life._

Her so-called teammates, on the other hand, played completely foreign tunes. That air-headed chick from Mars probably didn't even know the meaning of the word-Artemis wouldn't be surprised if she turned out to be a recurring character for that pony show on TV. (Did they even have TV over there, Artemis had no idea.) The goody-goody fish dude with a holier-than-thou attitude was probably raised by sardines down the fucking ocean if the archer had to guess. The only teammate she didn't mind sticking with (coincidentally a male with a nice pair of dark blue eyes and the ass of an underwear supermodel) spent his entire life in a damn pod. Oh, and then there was Flashy whatshisname, _god_, that useless piece of thrash, that despicable bastard, jerk, pea-brained sorry excuse of a joke reminded Artemis every single thing she hated about her life.

...Which brought her to the case of said jerk's best friend, the Boy Wonder. He had welcomed her when she came butting right into their cute little heroic parade-sure, Kaldur was a little bit distanced yet nice to her and Megan _had been_ nice to her until that one incident with Superboy. (She seriously thought it wouldn't matter if the Powers That Be replaced Megan with a llama in aforementioned incident and pressed the replay button, but that was another story._ ) _But _Robin_? The archer was confused to say in the least. Lack of Mr. Gay Hat didn't seem to bother him as much, well, unlike _some_ people, and dare she say he seemed glad to have her around. She occasionally caught him snickering at her snarky comments or lame excuses she threw around whenever she screwed up.

For all she knew the bird kid could be making fun of her, but it was still a nice change for the archer. It sucked into oblivion when almost nobody laughed at her jokes anyway. (Her audience consisted of three people foreign to earth, _the Batman_'s protege and one guy that seemed to hate her, but that too was another story.)

Of course the Boy Wonder had warned her, had told her to not go alone but_ no_, Artemis knew how to take care of herself better than the rest of the team combined, sans Robin. It was a simple mission-a _simple _mission!-observe and report. A small mob, Ukrainian, Romanian, whatever, she was in no position to remember, had moved to Happy Harbor for god knows what and who. Observe and report. It was their job to find out _who_ and _what for._

Why, oh why did that job have to include her dangling off from a pair of clotheslines in between two buildings and a dead end, approximately forty feet above solid ground?

The people they were supposed to be spying on seemed to be quiet, even _nice _at first. A group of ten; three females, six males and one none of the ex-sidekicks managed to figure out, sitting around a round table, all in black suits worth a solid year in Gotham Academy. During that one hour she could not feel her butt, they politely chatted away in some weird language while drinking tea with their pinkies raised.

It would have been quite the picture, worth a nice spot on _Brucie Wayne_'s wall(though Artemis heard he had a thing for dogs when it came to art), had it not clashed with the background so terribly; a rundown prefabricated house by the dock, among many others that were anything _but_ welcoming. It smelled of sea, wood and something everyone's favourite blonde would rather not name. Certainly not somewhere you would want to take your tourist friend to.

It was odd.

They had to nest themselves upon different roofs to get a clear view without – hopefully- being noticed, while staying in contact through the comm. The archer did not think any of the suit guys packed a punch, but the sight of six fellows in odd costumes, perched upon low prefabricated roofs like it was a feat, merely eating, whining or quarreling for whatever reason was _the _definition of embarrassing.

And it was one freaking cold night too.

Flashy was the first to start whining, exactly five minutes after their arrival. The archer occasionally told him to _shut up and be patient _over the comm_,_ but she too was consumed by boredom and cold after one very uneventful hour. Even the super-strict fish guy seemed to be annoyed with the whole thing.

Perhaps it was a test? The question rose into their current thoughts and was soon voiced. The whole team was not needed for watching a rather normal group of people drink tea, now_ that_ was clear like a crystal.

The Boy Wonder then simply, and rather coldly one might say, stated the Batman knew what he was doing. The blonde assumed it was not that odd or boring for him, the guy did spend his childhood running after crazy ass clowns and mustard men after all, _and _with a guy dressed like a bat.

It was about two hours later that a company arrived. A woman; long carnelian hair like a lion's mane and bust size that could bring many to shame, in an even more expensive, frilly dress-Victorian style or something equally crazy and pompous, the archer wouldn't know. It wasn't exactly her area of expertise.

"She must be their leader." Aqualad had stated sternly, but the archer could tell it from the way the suit guys rose to their feet upon her arrival anyway.

"Man, she's one hot leader."

Groaning, the archer spat. "Shut up, _Flash Child_."

"You _wish_ you had a rack like that." came the speedster's quick reply.

Artemis decided to grit her teeth and ignore the snicker that rose from the little device in her ear, focusing on the target instead.

Okay, so maybe the woman's rack was bigger than hers, but it was_ totally_ not what made her worth looking at. There was something else Flashy apparently missed (for he was too focused on her gratuitous cleavage), something in the way she took her steps, the way she smiled with her full, blood-red lips, something that screamed confidence, something..._animal._

The red-head chatted with the suit guys about five minutes. It was right then the Batman's protégé spoke hastily over the comm. "They're talking about some shipment!"

"Shipment? Nobody said anything about a shipment!" Flashy's reply arrived before Artemis could even open her mouth. "Wait, _dude_! You can understand what they say?"

There was a small, quiet sigh she caught before his reply. "It's Latin. They speak too fast though, I can barely understand a word."

She chose to close her mouth back. "Is there anything else of importance, Robin?" , the fish boy asked. He perhaps did not wish to waste time questioning why the Boy Wonder didn't share this piece of information beforehand.

"Not quite sure but I think they are-"

"Cars." It was Superboy's husky voice. '_Hot even when he speaks nonsense.'_ "I hear cars."

"...expecting the shipment." the Boy Wonder completed wearily.

"Brilliant!" The flashy kid spoke before she could open her mouth again _and she was getting quite darn annoyed! _"I thought we were just supposed to observe and report!"

It did no longer take a guy with super hearing to hear them coming. Black vans, about twelve of them, headed to the prefabricated houses. The archer found herself not really wanting to know what they brought.

"Just shut up and be glad we're through with _this._" Superboy spat as he rose up. Little cookie fragments falling around from his black tee toned down the dramatic effect of it, but only Megan was there to see it anyway.

"Superboy, calm down." The team leader commanded, calm as ever. Artemis wondered if he was ever afraid of getting punched into oblivion by the guy, but brushed the thought aside. "Miss Martian."

The alien blinked innocently at the mention of her name. "Yes?" There was a soft sigh coming from the Atlantean, barely audible through the comm.

"_Oh. _Sorry._"_

Soon the blonde archer felt that weird sensation of something very _soft_ and _slippery_ moving inside her mind.

_'Stay down and out of sight as possible. Miss Martian, get closer and see if you can get a view of their package. Be careful.'_ Did the fish dude have an accent inside his mind or what?

_' On it.' _was the alien's reply. Artemis ducked further into the shadows, her body moving against the tiles of the roof-god damn it, it was cold! She really wished she could get into some action.

Oh right, telepathic communication.

'_I'm not gonna warm you up even if you beg me.' _Flashy's voice rang inside her brain. She emitted a mental groan. _'Screw you, Flashy.'_

_'No, screw you-'_

_'Um, guys?' _For once Artemis was glad for the alien's presence. She thought she heard the Boy Wonder snicker very quietly somewhere to her left._ 'I think...Maybe we came to the wrong place?'_

Artemis opened her mouth to protest, only to remember that they were communicating_ telepathically_.Then the image of tens of men in black suits, headed towards the house they spent hours watching, with what appeared to be...

..._Books?_

'_You gotta be fucking kidding me.' _she spat.

_'Never thought I would see the day, but I agree with the blondie. What the hell?'_

The door of their target house opened quietly, revealing the busty red head, followed by the suit guys. Each of their faces were adorned with frowns, their shoulders up, their heads held high, like they were going into a-

'_Miss Martian, stay out of sight._ _They seem to be preparing for a battle.'_ Aqualad's voice rang. '_Get ready and hold your positions.'_

_'Finally!' _As hot as Superboy was, his voice hurt Artemis' head. She decided she didn't want the guy in her head. Then she stopped thinking about it.

_'Robin?'_

_'I swear I haven't moved an inch.' _His statement earned a mental snicker from Flashy, who then asked, '_Who battles with freaking books?' _

_'The book is sharper than the sword or something like that, little Flashy.' _

_'Shut up, Artemis. People actually speak Latin in this era? That language is six feet under, man. Even Caesar and whatever attended to his funeral and shit.' _

It was then her eyes caught what, or rather, _who _lured her into the mess she was in. One of the suit guys, glancing around like he wanted to sunk so deep into earth that even the Batman couldn't find him, holding onto a suitcase like his life depended on it, slowly, very slowly made his way out of sight. Not the archer's trained one, of course, but Artemis admitted it was a good try.

_'Guys.' _She slightly rose up from her place to get a better view. _'One guy is trying to run away. _'

There was a silence.

_'He's carrying some bag.'_

Perhaps nobody wanted to miss the action that seemed to be clouding upon the youngsters.

_'Artemis.' _came the Atlantean's reply. _'Follow him. Be careful and stay in contact.'_

_-Ring-a-ring-a ring a-round the rosie.-_

'_Why me?' _Why couldn't she just let the poor fellow be on his way and be quiet about it anyway?

_'Why, is little Arty afraid?' _the speedster teased in a melodic tone.

The blonde rolled her eyes. _'Fine_.' she spat, swiftly rising from her hide.

She blended in with the shadows the moment her feet made contact with the ground. Her dark brown eyes hastily scanned the area; it didn't take too long to spot the guy, he was either brain-damaged or...well, the archer couldn't find another option as she darted forwards.

_'I'll go with you.'_ the Boy Wonder's voice rang inside her head.

_-A pocket full of posies.- _Gritting her teeth, Artemis answered. _'I'll manage myself, thanks.'_ She had then thought he was making fun of her and she was _not_ going to let him underestimate her just because he was-well, he was the goddamn Batman's protégé.

Though about an hour later she decided that she would rather have him make fun of her if that meant he would help her out of the mess she got into.

It was quick. Her sleek body poured into the night, the guy she was trailing did not even suspect her as he made his way into the outskirts of the city, the slums of Happy Harbor one could say. He went into a small building that clearly had been better at some point in the past, the archer herself made her way to the rooftop of another one across the empty street. She could see the guy from the curtain-free windows, he had entered an empty flat, still glancing around and probably sweating horribly.

Everything was normal, so fucking normal, Megan was saying something directed at Superboy about her cookies through the telepathic link, the speedster was questioning Robin's whereabouts, he had probably done his ninja thing again and-and then the suit guy opened a window, inhaled deeply and there was pain, _pain, _briefest seconds worth an eternity in the hell_, _someone tearing her brain off her head and _goddamn _why couldn't she just move! -...

_-Ashes, ashes.-_

And then all went dead.

Endless silence in its peaceful, yet suffocating glory.

She called for her teammates in her head. Once, twice...She quickly lost the count. It was drowning her, the silence, the _silence,_ a distasteful feeling formed upon her stomach, soon devouring her body and her mind - was that, was _that_ fear?

Her deep slumber, her trip to her own little black abyss was cut short by crucifying pain in her right leg. And this time, it did not go away. She emitted a short scream, almost like a screech, before crashing down onto the ground. Something had pierced her leg. Something had gone _through_ her goddamn right leg!

Gritting her teeth, the archer painfully groaned, tears pouring down to her face as she tried to tame the pain, to put a leash on the merciless beast. She muttered something, but her words were inaudible, unintelligent. One single moment of weakness, it had cost her more than she was willing to pay. She looked up, though she already knew who the cashier was this time.

She had no idea how or when, but somehow the frog-faced guy with a balding spot on top of his head had managed to get to the rooftop of the building across the one Artemis nested upon.

He was shooting_ laser beams _at her.

Now if her leg didn't hurt as much, she would've laughed. This whole situation, she could swear the god or whoever wrote her shitty fate got the idea from a four-paneled, hero-bashing caricature in _Gotham Gazette _she read in a quiet Sunday morning once_. _Maybe deities and she had something in common and that was somewhat satisfying.

In the last panel, she could reminiscence, the last hero standing died in a comical fashion.

That was enough to fuel her rage. She was not _some_ hero, she was _the_ Green Arrow's partner for fuck's sake! She was not going down without a fight. Even if her death was certain, she was _not_ going down without a fight!

It took her entire willpower, her entire _being_ to move, but she moved, barely avoiding the arrow-like red beams pointed at her. It was not as graceful or as strong as her usual movement, but sloppy, painful, even bloody. Her body rolled away from the arrows' reach and for a second, just a second she had gone mad with pain. Tears blurred her vision, she gritted her teeth so hard to not scream as she saw, no, felt the second wave of beams coming. She forced her body to move again and...

The solid ground was gone.

Honestly, Artemis was getting tired of paying more than she was willing to pay.

Blood splatter. Throat-tearing scream. -_We all fall down.- _Blond hair fluttering like wings. But it never came, it never did. No splat. No disfigured body, no bones going right through internal organs, no brain matter scattering around.

Instead her back met some kind of a thread and that was enough, she didn't know how or where she found enough of her _mind_, but that was enough for her hand to reach out and hold onto it. Her arrows flew out of her bag, making such little sounds as they met what was once to be her death.

Perhaps her mother was right. Perhaps she did have a strong will to live, she was a survivor.

And that was how she ended up in her current situation.

Now she had no idea what that fucking son of a bitch was doing up there. She had no idea what she was supposed to do. She had no idea about _anything, _the only solid thing in her mind was that she was going to met her death far too soon for her taste and she was somewhat agonizingly lucky enough to choose _how_ - by her enemy's hands or by letting just her hand go. Unless fate decided to go and cut the _thread_, oh how deliciously fitting that was.

She mindlessly hung there about three minutes. It was as if her whole body was moving purely on instinct, her mind had long been shut off, stuck replaying certain scenarios of her demise over and over and over again.

Perhaps nothing _did_ last forever in where she lived. Her thoughts cracked, images of blood, brain, bone, dirt and dust began to blur and fade into nonexistence.

The first thing to pour into those cracks was cold.

Her outfit wasn't made to keep her warm. Heck, she didn't even know if her outfit had any function, other than branding her _hello_, _I'm Green Arrow's sidekick. _Oh, she was getting sidetracked.

Blood loss. She was suffering from blood loss. She was going to die. That bastard was not coming for her. She did not get to choose her death in the end. She was going to die. She wasn't going to get back at Wally for that boobs joke. She was going to pass out, be drowned in dark, fade into eternal silence, the bells were tolling for her, her hand was going to grow weaker and weaker until she would just _let_ _go_ and even then she wasn't going to be able to notice it.

Well, she probably wasn't going to feel much pain. That was good, wasn't it?

_Thwack._

Her thread of life gave in.

It was that simple. Just a _thwack. _Nothing flashy. She was dying. That simple. She had never been on _this_ end of the arrow, no, never this close.

She was falling, -_no, no, no, no!- _dying. Not by the hands of enemy. Not by the hands of her _friends._ Just a joke, -_this isn't happening, this isn't happening!-_just a cruel joke, a-

"ARTEMIS!"

She did not respond. She had long forgotten her own name.

Strong grip. Red. Domino mask. Stains of anger, horror, blood.

She passed out.

* * *

><p><em>Hang in there.<em>

Hang in where? She was hanging onto something before, she could vaguely remember it.

_C'mon Art, breath!_

Artemis was her name. She was supposed to breath.

_Don't you fucking die on me!_

Death. Memories flooded into her consciousness -_inhale, exhale, inhale-_; mom's face, her first _hunt_, her crush in fifth grade pulling out her hair, Ollie's beard, mom's smile. Missions, threads. Justice, redemption. _Live your life for me. You have a chance to make your life better. _

She was not dead. She was _not _going to die_. _

"Atta girl."

Even with her vision blurred, she could recognize that smirk anywhere.

"Fuck you..._Robin_."

There was a tired, slightly forced laugh, his trademark laugh. She blinked a few times, each blink heavier than the previous.

There was a huge gash across his chest, going right through the R, bruises and scratches of various sizes here and there. His mask was torn slightly and his cape was-Artemis then realized he was using it to apply pressure on her right leg.

_Ouch._

As if he heard her thoughts, he smirked again. "You totally died there."

She rolled her eyes. "Yeah, whatever." There was a small silence before she began again. "What the...hell happened?"

His smirk fell. "Grave matters, young one. Grave matters."

"I'm serious."

And his smirk came back, quick as lightning. "So am I. We had to call the Batman."

The archer's eyes widened in response—-and man, was she sleepy or what? "But it's not his-"

"Turf?" He snickered. "Well, I'm his goddamn sidekick."

Artemis emitted a sound similar to a laugh, before silence fell back onto them. It wasn't uncomfortable, not for the blonde at least, but perhaps it was for the Boy Wonder as he spoke again.

"I told you to let me come with you."

Her head rose immediately, her eyes ignited with fury. Her head was throbbing with pain and she wasn't really sure if her eyelids were on same level, which might have made her move less threatening and even humorous for the young hero.

"I _can_ take care of myself."

He heaved a sigh. "Yeah, obviously."

"Look, I'm not some damsel in distress-"

"I understand that-"

"I went through worse you little twerp! Don't just come playing the hero like you-"

"You're _human_!"

He expected some reply, Artemis guessed. _Human._ That was a low blow. Her mouth hung open. She looked at him, words refusing to come out of her mouth. _Human._ Her eyes bore deep into his, from that little gap on his mask she thought she saw blue.

And then, her open mouth formed into a full-fledged smirk. "Well, so are _you _kiddo_._"

He laughed. It wasn't a snicker, not a creepy ninja laugh of his, just a clear, simple, honest laugh, one she had never heard before.

"Yeah, we both are."

Oh. Oh. _Oh. Hello, Artemis! _

"Now shut up and don't sleep. Help is on the way."

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><p>I went over almost the entire thing like five times, hopefully I didn't miss anything. Last parts probably suck. I was way too tired...<p>

I wanted to use the original version of Ring Around the Rosie, but then decided to stick with this one.

Oh, I actually have a plot (the title is somewhat related), it's not going to be a series of one-shots but will focus on Rob/Art friendship anyway. This was a looong introduction chapter of some sorts... Will probably add a few OCs very, very later. Worked pretty hard on them so don't worry, they won't suck...I hope.

GLORIOUS SLEEP


	2. Crystalline Water Clock

So people actually reviewed/faved/alerted last chapter and...I'm incredibly shocked. You guys are awesome! I don't even think I can live up to your expectations./sadface

Disclaimer : Don't own YJ, If Wishes Were Horses, Snow White and Rose Red, any other thing I referenced and forgot about etc.

_II. Crystalline Water Clock_

"..._in which the tinker doesn't work."_

_Pain._

"_Megan got hit! God damn it Rob, the comm's-dude, come on, MOVE!" Whose voice is it? Who is it?_

_Heaviest of clouds. Can't think straight. Thwack, thwack. Tens, hundreds, thousands of little red stars shining just above...Black field of little red roses..._

"_Superboy, get Miss Martian out of here!-"_

_She's smiling at something, at nothing? The woman with red hair._

"_Find Artemis!Robin, do you hear me? She might be-"_

_Find Artemis. Follow the little dot on the screen. Can't look away. Can't stray his eyes from his goal. What if he loses track of it forever?_

"_SB-" Is that his voice? How weak, how...pained it sounds. "Contact Batman when you're far enough-" _

_There is no one to hear him however._

_There is nothing in his sight, nothing but the dark. _

_He's on his knees. He, for one, welcomes the dark, he wants to sleep, he feels like he hasn't closed his eyes...for ages. Where did Alfred put his bed anyway?_

"_What is the matter with you, little man?"_

_He looks up. The red woman, in all her passionate and blood tainted glory, is smiling, gentle and silky, on her knees right before him. _

"_Who...are you?"_

_It is a wonder how suspicious he can become in barely a second. The woman giggles in response._

"_My name is Rose Red." she says. Her hands reach out to him, pale and smooth, slowly and tenderly embracing his face._

_He doesn't resist. Not even when her hands move onto his neck._

"_And," she adds blithely. "I shall strike you dead."_

_Wha-he can't breath, he can't breath! He wants to move, he wants to fight back, he's trained to fight back! Where did his hands go?_

"_B-Bruce...Help..."_

_There he stands, right behind her. He hadn't noticed him, of course not, in the end Batman is one with the dark. _

_He speaks quietly, yet his voice scares even the darkness away. "I won't, Richard." he says. The woman utters another giggle. "Because you failed." _

_No! If he hadn't just stood there immobilized, if he had just told his parents about the clown, if he had alerted his teammates, if he had been a better leader than Aqualad-_

"_You failed."_

_-If wishes were horses...-_

_You failed_.

Two words. They were what awoke him from the sleep he barely managed to catch.

_Rest until further notice. Your mentors have been notified._

They were so going to get an earful from the Batman. They were doomed.

_Well, so are you kiddo._

Man, chicks were so hard to figure out.

A small sigh was heard in an equally small room. A single sized bed, a dresser filled with black tights and oversized sweatshirts of various colours, mechanical objects scattered across a working table-clean and tidy, not much gave away the lonely occupant's personality.

_-...then beggars would ride.- _He felt like he didn't sleep at all just when his mentor's anger was certain to hit the youngsters in but a few hours. If there was anything Bruce was particularly bad at it was managing said anger, a postponed fit might just prove fatal for the boy in his current state of both body and mind.

_Perfect. _His chest wound seemed to throb in agreement.

A few attempts at getting back to sleep proved fruitless. He wasn't the one to 'get back to sleep' as waking up in the middle of long dead night usually meant mission, his system had thoroughly adapted to such occasions.

That night was no different, albeit for a completely different cause. The traffic in his brain just_ wouldn't_ stop-same scenes, same thoughts, even in his sleep he found no shelter, as they would pour onto his long corrupted dreams and hungrily devour them

_You failed._

With another sigh, this time considerably heavier, Robin threw the blankets off his tired body with a lazy movement. There was another throb which went ignored, followed by a lingering feeling of acidic burn on his chest. While he preferred to not share such a thought with others, he actually found comfort in that. Having been through much worse countless times before, he would occasionally feel _wrong_ when things seemed to go_ right_.

A quick glance at a neon glow table clock announced the exact time to be 4:12 am. _Brilliant, absolutely brilliant. _Just what he needed after that heavy dose of crap from previous night. Now perhaps some fresh air would help him clean his mind?

Getting enough dressed for public view and putting on a pair of sunglasses seemed slower than ever now that his left arm was out of a good amount of service-strained pretty badly during his rescue-dive down a building. He didn't quite have enough time to grip his rope right when a certain blonde was descending to death.

Something of a ghostly smirk adorned his lips. He was told to keep away from the playground for a whole week (though he gave himself three days at most) hence it was, like one British butler would say, jolly good news that there were..._certain_ people to keep him occupied.

Especially since a look from Bruce dearest told him he was not getting off the hook so easily this time.

The mountain appeared dead in silence. From deep within occasionally came the speedster's snoring, clearly announcing he was fast asleep. (Robin almost felt bad for the Boy of Steel. Super hearing was more of a curse when Wally was involved.) He decided to be a nice guy and turn the computer systems' sound off before they broadcasted his departure to each and every resident of Mt. Justice. With his luck Tall, Dark and Mysterious could still be around lingering deep within the shadows, brooding, keeping a bathroom occupied or... attending other batly business. Alerting the Bat of his early presence would be quite distressing, heavy on the _dis._ Very, _very _heavy.

Cold air licked his face and brought ocean into his lungs. Beneath his sunglasses he could still see a few stars left behind by the night; as the sun had just begun to rise, the once black night sky became a light tone of cadet grey in his honour. The sounds of ocean, rhythmical and calm as ever, came from a place nearby, soothing his thrashed nerves. Each breath he took, one after another, lingered on air for mere seconds before withering away.

To be fair the only reason daddy Bat did not hammer the covert team the moment they stepped into the safety of Mt. Justice was because there just _weren't_ enough people to hammer. Only three members, the ones who managed to stand up to some extent, were present, those being Superboy, Wally and -_sadly, _he had decided after receiving his fair share of The Glare- Robin himself. Instead, after a thorough bodily examination and quick Batglare sessions, they were told to hit the showers and rest.

Oh boy, they were royally screwed once and they were going to get royally screwed _again._

Just as cold dawn air began to ooze even into his bone marrows, sun lazily winking at him beneath the horizon, he decided to go back inside and have one very early breakfast. Preferably one filled with various forms of sugary substance. Oh, he could _really_ use that.

He was caught off guard by another's presence right when he took his first step into the mountain. Superboy stood awkwardly in front of the main gate, adorning his trademark tee and a pair of baggy trousers (Robin took a mental note of teaching the guy wonders of what mankind called _sleepwear _sometime in the near future), straight, tall and somewhat godly like the Man of Steel himself. His face, however, betrayed his posture-it was like somebody deleted Superman's head and copy-pasted a pouting puppy's in its place. On Paint. With a little speech balloon that said _Supey can't find mommy, help me mister?_

Did he even have a mom in the first place? Science was a mind-boggling thing indeed.

"Hi..." he started awkwardly. "You're up early, huh?"

The clone's eyes moved on him-he himself did not even move an inch. "No."

Now if there was a Bob in this conversation, just a normal Bob who lived downtown and worked at a market, he would be completely, utterly lost. Robin, on the other hand, knew that said clone's verbal skills were rather...limited and his very first word was possibly, no,_ definitely_ "_no"._

"Oh." he muttered. "You're going back to sleep then?"

"No." clone replied again.

_Uh. _"Something wrong, Supey?"

"She's too loud."

And he was pretty certain Wally was a guy up until that fateful second.

His thoughts were, however, interrupted by a loud crash, followed by a feminine scream, no, _a horrid screech of a banshee! _Superboy fidgeted ever so slightly before him, corners of his mouth falling even more.

"OKAY, OKAY! JUST _PLEASE _STOP!"

_Oh man. _

"I tried to stop them." Superboy stated forlornly, his eyes again deeply focused on the tiny frame before him. Robin thought he saw his bottom lip peeking out ever so slightly.

_What did I ever do to deserve this._

"Oh, I'll, uh..." He would be lying if he said he didn't actually consider calling daddy Bat and beg him to take him back to Gotham. "...go talk to them."

As he walked away, Superboy stood motionlessly behind him and...no, that couldn't be, was that...was that a smirk on his lips?

Robin turned his head to verify, but the clone had already turned away from him, walking away in his own pace.

* * *

><p>There were many things Bruce taught him, taught him very well at that, varying from speaking dead languages to rollerskating, from extremely useful to incomparably useless. (Bruce would occasionally tell him that there was no such thing as useless knowledge, though Robin begged to differ.) He could disarm bombs with relative ease, most would say he was a better acrobat than his own mentor and even a better hacker, he was a great dodger, at objects <em>and <em>subjects, as he would rarely, if ever, feel surprised.

Anything about his personal life, heat beams, ice, the Joker's acid, punches from big red guys and occasionally batarangs, dodging such things was something of a daily occurrence for him.

...But honestly, a flower vase directed at his head, by a teammate no less? That _was_ too much. If he hadn't been dodging things since the age of nine-

"_Oh,_ dearest bird fellow, save me!"

...God, how he wished he hadn't been dodging things since the age of nine. Why couldn't he just stay still and let the thing knock him out good anyway?

"EVEN GOD CAN'T SAVE YOU!"

Artemis stood there, on top of a bed, in a small infirmary room, adorning a simple and rather gratuitous hospital gown, her hair wild and messy, one of her tan legs completely covered in clean white bandages (though the other one was pretty nice to look at). There were two crutches in both her hands, she was skillfully using one to stay on her feet and the other one to...bash Green Arrow's head?

Maybe he really should've called the Batman after all.

Though it took little to no effort for the green-clad man to avoid the blonde's hits, there was an expression of pain on his face. Pure, utter, pretentious pain. The only reason he seemed to be unable to grab a hold of her makeshift weapon was most likely because he did not wish to harm her. Robin wondered if the girl in question even bothered to notice(though she seemed kind of...busy).

Then he wondered if it would be okay for him to pretend the scene before him never unfolded. At all.

"Bob would be totally dead right now."

Life was mysterious. Who knew _this_ situation could teach him such a valuable piece of information?

"_Who?_" the archer spat, her mouth agape, crutch stuck mid-air.

Then it was silence.

"Uh." his uninjured hand went to his hair instinctively. "Superboy can't sleep."

Awkward silence.

_You'd think Bruce Wayne's kid would be more adept at handling social matters._

Artemis' eyebrows rose up to highs Robin didn't think was possible. "_What?"_

Green Arrow cocked his head slightly towards her, what seemed to be a very, very cheeky smirk illuminating his features. "Must be my dashing presence."

"I'll _show_ you dashing presence!"

Artemis made another move, a dashing one in Green Arrow's words (Why was he speaking like that in the first place anyway?), for the bearded man's head. And missed. Of course she missed. The important part of it all was that...traumatic incident her dashing move caused thereafter.

Centrifugal force, or some other scientific wonder, finally took its toll on the archer for unknown yet rather guessable causes. She fell. He moved to catch. When did he become so adept, so...used at catching falling people anyway?

Perhaps it was wise to not go there.

The thing was that instead of moving to her aid-their aid- Green Arrow made a dash for the exit, waving his hand cheerfully at the youngsters, now on top of each other, along the way. Robin knew he was strong enough to carry the blonde _if_ his arms were in a good shape, but in a spur of moment he had forgotten all of that. Along with his chest wound, which now burned horribly...He frowned. No amount of boobs could fix that.

"The hormones, kid, they burn!"

_You fucking cheap Robin Hood replica-_ He cocked his head upwards, well, as much as he managed to anyway, to voice his thoughts, but something – again his suspicion – made him stop in his tracks; why hadn't the archer said something, anything? To him, it seemed totally out of character.

_Then_ he understood why. After a rather absurd movement of neck, he could see the reason. Martian Manhunter stood there, in the dark corridors of infirmary, right by the entrance where he assumed Green Arrow was standing, his expression unreadable, but doubtlessly nowhere approving.

_Oh. _Artemis rolled over to the ground with a short gasp.

The alien stood there motionless before hastily making his leave. As if he wanted to give the youngsters some...much needed space.

"I don't think we left a good impression on him." The archer coughed shortly.

The Boy Wonder nodded in agreement. "Probably. I can pretty much feel sexual education sessions coming."

"Well now, aren't you the type to make the first move?" A smirk was blatantly evident in her voice.

"_Who_ in their right mind would flirt with you?"

"I wouldn't even look at you, kiddo. Don't bother."

He snickered. "Because you're mostly too busy oggling Supey's ass, blondie."

"His-" Now a _blush _was blatantly evident in her voice. "His ass is nice, okay!"

He didn't really consider that a question(that would be way too awkward after that little Supey-can't-sleep conversation), instead rose another statement for the archer. "Well, my ass is nice too, y'know."

"And smaller than _mine._" It sounded like she was barely suppressing a fit of laughter.

He turned his head to look at the archer who laid beside him, one of his brows raised, ready to slap an answer to her face-but, _oh god_, her hair looked like she just got struck by lightning, plastered to her face and even taking little trips into her mouth and nose. The words he prepared for her never came, instead laughter burst out from his throat.

"What!" The blonde looked bewildered. "Something on my face?"

_Something on my face?_ It took him three solid minutes to suppress his laughter. He wiped a tear from his eye, "When are they going to take you back to zoo?"

She groaned. "It's the hair, isn't it?"

There was a short silence, occasionally accompanied by the Boy Wonder's quiet giggles and the archer's cat-like hissing. He briefly wondered if the reason she did not resort to violence was because she noticed his wounds, it was her job to notice things after all.

"Why's he here?" the archer's voice rose above the silence.

His smile, along with his mood, fell. "Who?"

"Walking veggie."

He sighed shortly, his hand -again- instinctively going through his black hair. The floor was starting to hurt the back of his head, but he didn't quite feel like getting up yet. "His niece's wounded."

"Oh-wait,you_ don't _mean-" He didn't have to look at her to know her expression was pained and regretful. "Green Arrow didn't tell me anything." There was resentment, a tint of hate in her voice, but he didn't know who it was directed to.

He resisted the urge to rub his nasal bone, not wanting to go through everything, not when his mind was at last free of their grasp, but it went unnoticed by the archer.

Perhaps it a short explanation would be fine, especially for himself. "Megan was hit. Nothing too serious, really, but it knocked her out cold and...well, tore off the telepathic link or something. She had some sort of alien mental concussion, but she's going to be fine."

The archer's brows were furrowed with something that resembled worry, her eyes told him she wasn't satisfied with his explanation.

"You know I'm not satisfied with just that, right?"

Yes, he did.

He inhaled deeply. His head was beginning to pound with each breath, he complied his body's wishes and moved to a less bothersome, sitting position. "After you went after that guy, we got attacked."

Her eyebrows rose in question. "Let me guess, laser beams?"

He pointed at his chest. "_Bingo!_ Now what was the question again?" She rolled her eyes in response.

He continued. "So it kinda hurt, you know? Felt like somebody was frying and freezing my brain at the same time, actually. Then it started to get kinda hazy, so I don't remember much until Wally pulled me over to safety."

"Well, the whole thing was because of the telepathic link getting cut and didn't have much to do with the laser show. Batman taught me stuff about that. Anyway, after that the leader told SB to get Megan away from there and alert the League while he's at it. Oh and me to find you. While he and Wally tried to take care of the situation."

"So nothing bad happened?"

"Wally's fine, but Kaldur, he..." Robin trailed off. "He suffered a...heavy blow."

From what Wally told him,the two remaining heroes were cornered not so long after Robin left. Pushed to the edge and already mentally suffering from that previous mental blow, Kaldur had acted purely on instinct, probably unable to think straight – and apparently walked right into the grim rain to stop whatever, or rather whoever, he felt was responsible for it, his rough Atlantean skin providing him some sort of protection. His instinct turned out to be correct, death raining upon the two finally coming to an end, but he had suffered a heavy blow to his lower torso in return, dealt within the blink of an eye as their targets faded into the night. The thought of being the one to get hit by whatever hit him sent shudders down his spine. They probably wouldn't even find a single cell of his.

The archer just stared at him. Blank, expressionless. -_If turnips were watches...- _Even though the team was anything but welcoming, there was something deep within her dark pools...something that hinted remorse. Even though she really hadn't done wrong, if there was anyone to blame it was _him-_

"He's going to be fine." he tried to assure her, comfort her, but his own guilt betrayed his voice. "He lost some blood, but he'll be up and running-"

"Robin." the archer spat. "Be quiet."

"Yeah."

The archer bit her lower lip. "I'm the one to blame."

"Hardly." There was weak mockery in his voice, _because he was the one to blame, _but it was instantly noticed by the archer, earning him an animal, lethal glare. Man, the blonde was good at reading him. "You seem to think you need to prove yourself to the team by doing everyone else's work or something. Well, while you're at it, wanna wash my tights too?"

The girl glared at him again, but it was weaker, softer. -_...I'd wear one by my side.-_ Almost friendly. He didn't know how friendly glares worked, but that didn't matter.

"Besides," he added a dramatic cough. "I broke the _Screwed Up Scale_ this mission."

The archer rolled her eyes again. Robin was starting to think they were going to pop out any moment. "Right." She seemed almost embarrassed, sincere, like she didn't really know what to say...Robin, however, _knew_ better than that. "We should go both beg Batman for some _nasty_ punishment, kiddo. Maybe lick his boots. You know he's gonna chew us and spit us out soon anyway."

Did she notice the innuendo that laid low beneath her words? He wondered.

"Deal."

On the second thought, she surely did.

* * *

><p>In the end they didn't really have to beg the Bat-one look from him was enough to freeze even their thoughts. Kaldur was absent as he still laid in infirmary (though he had woken up a while ago) and while Megan seemed perfectly fine other than a few scratches, her green uncle apparently forbid her from getting out of the bed (probably to avoid the stress a certain Bat would gladly invoke) thus the remaining members had to get chewed out in their place. (Robin assumed the Bat was not happy about this.) Actually, that was an understatement. Heavy on the <em>under<em>.

"The League does _not _have to clean your messes." Somewhere behind the Bat, a slight guilt flashed across Black Canary's face for brief seconds. "We do _not _send you out so you can make matters worse and call us back."

There was a silence. Dead, dead silence.

"Is that understood or must I go again, syllable by syllable?"

Again, no reaction. Robin thought he heard Red Tornado's inner machines or whatever he called them working, but didn't dare look up. He didn't want to die, nope, he was still too young.

"You seem to believe the League somehow _got your back,_" Ouch, now that hurt. "When the League has far more important matters to handle. You are _responsible _for each and every of your actions. _Not _us. You will all receive detailed reports of your _wrongs _and training schedules prepared in accordance."

He didn't say they were dismissed. No _well, you tried. _Then again there was no _well, you tried _in this line of work. The Bat just turned away from the youngsters, his cape dancing behind him.

Superboy, as always the one to have _enough guts _as much as Robin hated to admit, was the one to speak. "What about the attackers?"

-_And_ _if "if"s and "an"s were pots and pans...-_

"_We _will handle it." He assumed they weren't planning to congratulate the weirdos for their great efforts.

As Batman made his theatrical leave, he finally took a much-needed, soundly breath. They seemed to be off the hook. They were probably be given a few days to recuperate and he could-

"Robin."

_Oh fuck._

* * *

><p>That night, Wally West woke up early from his sleep. It was a rare occasion, akin to finding diamond among rocks, hence he decided he would send his thanks to a certain Bat sometime in the future.<p>

When he managed to grow a pair of balls to face him, of course. He had been afraid of the guy since, what, five?

Yet there was something amiss, he could feel it as he made his way to the kitchen. He felt heavy. Maybe he was hungry. He was always hungry but maybe he was a little too hungry this time?

_Splat._

Something big, slimy and _disgusting _fell on his foot. He looked down only to face its...pair dangling off from his chest...

_What. _His thoughts were rather short when he was attempted to remove the matter with his finger, to have it stuck inside the...No, he had to be dreaming, it was as if he grew a pair of soggy, sticky boobs-

"_WHAT THE FUCKING HELL!"_

"Green to Red, move to printing phase." came the archer's voice from the little device in his ear.

Oh right, what had the archer told him? _You look down, kiddo. Big sis has a great plan to cheer you up! _She had called it the Great Alliance or something along those lines, the exact words escaped him as he burst out laughing, his eyes glued at his screen, not wanting to miss _a pixel_ of it.

"Red to Green-" He never got to finish his sentence though, as both sides of the comm began their muffled laughters at the same moment. "Got it. He looks kind of mad from here."

"Oh god, videotape it." _Videotape it? _He snickered softly. "I don't want to miss a second of it!"

He rolled his eyes, though he later decided there was no point in such an act when there was no one to see it. "He's gonna skin me alive."

"Aw, come on." came the archer's reply. "Your secret's safe with me, I promise."

* * *

><p>Where's the plot? It'll hit you before you know it, I promise. I'm really more eager than anyone to get there (writing fluff is hard, I never knew). Man, I forgot what I was gonna write here.<p>

Oh right, the title. I didn't just randomly pick three words...Well, you see, when water freezes, it crystallizes. Meaning the water in the clock is frozen. Meaning time isn't flowing. Meaning not much happens in this chapter, lol.

So, as Nelohra kindly pointed out (thank you!), I kind of jump between scenes. Tried to avoid that this chapter and keep things rather...simpler. I couldn't find anything more suitable than If Wishes Were Horses, it's one of my least favourite too... What else, uh...Expect more friendship development/team interaction. Yesterday I saw a guy walking down the street while pointing at things with a laser. Oh, I know I didn't finish the rhyme, since the last verse is kind of right below the title...

What else..."My name is Rose Red and I shall strike you dead." is a couplet from the fairy tale Snow White and Rose Red. I kind of played with it to fit in the story. The original was "Snow White and Rose Red, don't beat your lovers dead." if I remember correctly.

Did Superboy really smirk? Well, you decide.

I assume Robin is the type that thinks grimly but acts gleefully. His thoughts occasionally contradict what he does and he often knows more than he lets out.

Uhhh...Tune in next week, same time, same channel!

Oh and constructive critism/flames (please do state your reason though) are welcome.

TIME TO SLEEP


	3. No Sane Man's Land

Another three am, another chapter. I actually wanted this to be short, but...Well, you know, it came out longer than expected.

Disclaimer : Don't own YJ, Snow Queen.

* * *

><p><em>Once upon a time, there lived a hobgoblin; so wicked that he was a real demon, for he kept a school to spread his evil and shunned his brethren known for playing pranks on oblivious travelers, yet bore no ill will. One day, when he was in a merry mood, he made a looking-glass which had the power of making everything good or beautiful reflected in it almost shrink to nothing, while everything that was worthless and bad looked increased in size and worse than ever. Even the loveliest landscapes appeared like boiled spinach, and the people became hideous, looked as if they stood on their heads and had no bodies. The glass soon rose to fame till at last there were no person nor land who had not heard of it; even the demons down below and the kings up on their thrones became victims of this cunning invention.<em>

_The demon then wanted to fly it up to heavens, but the higher he flew the more slippery the glass became, till it was finally free of his grip, fell to the earth in millions of pieces and rained down upon people..._

_III. No Sane Man's Land_

".._.and the stars hail down."_

Not much in the hero business surprised Artemis Crock anymore. She got into the line of work knowing what she was required to face day after day, having worked with what she was to expect for a considerable amount of time and while she refrained from voicing, what she was to expect running in her veins took the element of surprise from everything long time ago.

Now however, if she was able to produce any thoughts, she would change her mind. Pounding on Megan's telekinesis mambo-jumbo shield with her fists, in civilian clothing, accompanied by _Wally West_ while emitting "uh"s and "ah"s was _not_ what she had in mind.

"Now aren't they the cutest couple." The Boy Wonder hissed between his teeth, a smirk, painful and stressed, on his lips. Megan was in a similar condition, her brows furrowed, sweat pouring down her face, her once sweet eyes locked on the two offenders in a malicious gaze, her hands up and facing them. _Fuck you Robin. _Oh Artemis would get back at him, she would.

When she was no longer a zombie, that is.

* * *

><p><em>Hours ago...<em>

"No pranks. No. Pranks. _Absolutely _no pranks."

It was indeed a rare occasion, for the Batman to be standing in what one could call the living room of Mt. Justice for any other reason than missions or mission debriefing or something that had the word "mission" in it. It surprised-no, it _freaked _the fuck out of Artemis when the bat-clad guy appeared out of nowhere (Robin apparently got his creepy habit from his mentor) just when the youngsters were lazily laying on wherever available. His appearance just _screamed_ bad news. The archer thought he probably went around spilling red ink on people with little lifetime left in his free time, like that Celtic or Scandinavian legend she had heard from god knows where. _Downright terrifying._ His teammates, sans the said bat's protege, probably shared her thoughts as they disappeared into wherever after the Bat made his purpose clear.

"Am I making myself clear?"

Did he even have free time? She wondered.

"Yes, sir." The archer and the speedster, standing next to each other, the red-head covered in a brighter tone of red substance, mumbled in unison. Maybe if she didn't show her fear, the bat would go away?

Robin, standing behind his mentor, snickered quietly.

The prank war had been going on for about three weeks, its beginning dating back to that fateful day of Wally West and Sticky Boobs. (Artemis, as promised, did not rat out the Boy Wonder, though it was considerably easy as he avoided the mountain like plague during this period. She still suspected he was behind a few messy pranks however.) They started with small things; plastic bugs (Artemis was too badass to be scared of them), hot sauce in toothpaste, Barbies (It took Wally forever to separate one of them from Superboy) but then they both moved on bigger scales; shave cream filled rooms, undergarments hung on doors with suggestive notes, doors playing extremely annoying jingles when opened, overflowing toilets, shampoo filled condoms scattered as far as one can see, a certain fish boy smelling like sour milk for a whole week...And soon they brought everyone into their game, even Black Canary (after she fell victim to the overflowing toilet, just when she was _occupying it_) and Megan who thought of it as an earthly custom. Red Tornado attempted to stop them so many times that he would actually lose count if he wasn't an android, falling for a few along the way, until he could no longer take it. And after that, called the Batman as one could guess.

"You two," the Bat spoke, "will clean this mess."

The speedster's mouth hung open with the fraction of shock, "All by ourselves?"

The Bat had, however, already turned behind, walking away into darkness, clearly declaring that the matter was not up for debate. Just as the computer announced his departure and Artemis' tense shoulders fell and the Boy Wonder, in an attempt to mimic his mentor, spoke. "_All by yourselves."_

Wally groaned in response. "Dude, fuck you." His hand went through his hair, both Artemis and the Boy Wonder stepped back in order to avoid the ketchupy hurricane his act brought. "You sold us out!"

The Boy Wonder raised his eyebrows, though for which matter was unclear. A ketchup covered speedster was worth the surprise . "I _called _you. An hour ago. I told you Batman was coming."

"I thought he was coming here _for a mission!"_

The archer rolled her eyes in response. "You can _think?_"

"Well, unlike you." The speedster spat, moving his bright green eyes on the blonde. "Right, Rob?"

But the Boy Wonder was no more.

Wally and the archer exchanged troubled glances before Artemis spoke. "God, the kid's even creepier than his mentor-"

"Hey, somebody explain me why my doorknob's wearing a condom?" came the said kid's voice from somewhere afar.

While they would both erase the following incident from their memories, the speedster and the archer faced each other, smirked and gave each other a high-five.

* * *

><p>After four hours of her afternoon, just as the sun was beginning to disappear behind the horizon, the archer deemed her task at hand impossible and threw up her hands in despair, groaning loudly. The speedster covered <em>a whole fucking corridor <em>with post-its, all of which that said wonderful words such as "ARTEMIS IS A BITCH" and "ARTEMIS HAS SEWER BREATH". (She didn't quite catch him on act, but no other teammate had speed or patience enough for _that._)_ That fucking lowlife. _Now how was she supposed to get back at him after the Batman's_ no pranks_, _absolutely no pranks_?

Life was hard.

She sighed heavily. Perhaps there wasn't any use complaining, unless she wished to invoke the Bat's wrath.

She was pulling off another post-it (on which it said "ARTEMIS NEEDS BOOB JOB") when she felt a presence behind her; sharply turning her head provided her the image of Boy Wonder, cheekily smirking at him with his hands up, probably trying to mean that he meant no harm.

"_What._" she spat. "Came to help?"

He snickered. "Not in your lifetime."

She rolled her eyes, pulling off another post-it but not bothering to look at it. Even a speedster's creativity was limited.

After a minute of silence she was already getting impatient with the boy's sunglasses-hidden gaze. "Will you just _go away_ or something?"

She expected to find him gone when she turned her head, to do his super secret dark ninja thing, but the boy was still there, his hands in his pockets, his trademark smirk on his lips. "No." the bird sung.

She groaned inwardly. "I thought females weren't in your area of interest."

"Oh. What are you implying?"

"I'm implying you're gay."

The Boy Wonder raised an eyebrow. "And you base that assumption on...?"

She pulled off another one. "Kiddo, I _fell_ on you." she spoke. "You didn't even react."

She expected many things, many different reactions, but laughter wasn't one of them. "Oh, that's what you're talking about? _Is little Arty hurt?" _She threw him a glare. "Maybe you really need a boob job, huh?" he said, pointing at one of the post-its that hung on the wall.

_Goddamn Wally. _

"It's the _inner beauty _that counts!" The Boy Wonder's eyebrows rose up high at her remark. She hissed slowly in return. "_Just. Go. Away!_"

"'Kay."

With that he turned behind, leaving Artemis to her own freaking painful problems.

"There's one more thing." It was Robin once again that spoke. Artemis turned to face him, her eyes full of fury. "Wally just began to scrape that potato-onion mixture you guys spilled on the main road. He says he wouldn't mind help. You should bring an oxygen mask though, that smell could _kill _elephants."

_Oh. S'ppose that's my way out. _She emitted a lonely sigh as she made her way to the exit, using one hand to rub her aching neck as she walked.

"Mind removing that thing from my doorknob while you're at it?"

She didn't stop to look at him, a toothy smirk adorning her lips. "Not in your lifetime, kid."

* * *

><p>Once in a while Artemis would regret ever accepting Green Arrow's offer to become his sideki-<em>partner. <em>The guy wasn't like the Batman, he wouldn't carry around shark repellants and breath mints, heck, he wouldn't carry _anything _(not even a freaking tissue!)but his bow, arrows and a pair of knives; he would just make something out of what he had when the situation called, occasionally looking like an idiot along the way, though he would loudly state he was _damn cool_ if you asked him about that.

Artemis was, in that way, just like her mentor; a pair of knives, a composite bow, arrows, two pairs of her green uniform (she occasionally had to stitch them up when necessary, while she didn't appear so she could cook _and _sew pretty fine). She would often remember to be a little more prepared about things, often meaning when she was put into a situation she was not prepared for, but then forget about it altogether as soon as things were done.

"God, it _smells._" She tried to hold her breath just a while longer, to no avail.

Wally did something that resembled an eye roll, but it was lost among the tears that gathered in his bright green eyes. "Yeah, I couldn't tell, thanks."

"Your jokes make me itch, Flashy."

"You sure it's not the onions getting to you?" She smirked slightly, which immediately fell after she felt a tinge of burn in her throat.

God, she really needed an oxygen mask. And a long bath. Preferably now.

It was as if potatoes and onions _were _the ground and she was mopping away into nothing. She couldn't remember when the road became a garden of rotten food, but she guessed it was around the time Wally put milk cartons into Kaldur's bed, who was fast asleep during the incident, causing him to smell horrid for a whole week(the milk had gone bad before the poor guy even woke up).

It was brilliant. Simply brilliant. Even if it was Wally's work, she couldn't help but admire the...brilliance.

"Hey," she spoke between a fit of coughs, "what exactly did you have in mind when you did..." She crudely pointed at the neverending road of potato and onion. "This?"

"Huh?" He raised his eyebrows, tears cascading down his face. "I thought it was you."

"What the hell." She decided to screw hygiene and spit on the road to clean off that disgusting taste in her mouth, one arm on her broom, using it as a support beam of sorts. "_Who_ did this then?"

Wally seemed to catch up with her train of thoughts. "And why are _we _cleaning it?"

She glared at her broom, deep inside her mind hoping it would just fucking disappear. "Pretty sure it was Black Canary. She threw me this...smirk when I walked past her just while ago. " She coughed. "Way to be _mature._"

"Nah." Wally spoke, while he hadn't stopped mopping he had certainly gotten slower. "You should've seen the way Kal looked at me..."

There was a silence, almost dead other than occasional sounds of mopping and coughs, and was considerably eery. _Food. _Who would be able to get this much potato and wipe it on the-

_Who,_ indeed?

They both spat the word like poison, in perfect unison. "_Megan!_"

Oh god, she was going to get her. She was going to shove hand grenades down her pants. She was going to feed her her own disgusting cookies one by one until she-

"Whoa."

She looked up, clearly annoyed. Unknown to him, Wally had just shattered that vivid image she had in mind. "_What?_"

The speedster did not answer, pointing at the sky instead, his mouth agape.

It was a shooting star. No, it was a _handful_ of shooting stars...No, not quite, it was a fucking hurricane of shooting stars!

"Holy hell." She simply dropped the broom with a loud thwack, walking across the rotten food pool beside the speedster.

"Dude, that's odd." The speedster scratched his head, holding the broom (or at least, it was a broom at some point in the past) with one hand, one of his eyebrows high. "New Scientist didn't mention anything about star showers..." She raised one eyebrow. "Do me a favour and pretend you never heard that_-_"

"_Shit!"_

Within a second Artemis was doubled over in pain, her hands covering her face from a rather green gaze. That fucking _hurt_. First she was looking up at the sky wondering if she was supposed to make a wish or something, then there was pain, a horrendous pain, something piercing through her right eye followed by a constant feeling of _something_, needles, bees, stinging-

"You okay?" She felt his hand on her shoulder, the broom meeting the ground with a loud crack. "Artemis?"

"Y-Yeah..." She looked up, tears pouring down from her dark brown eyes like waterfall, one of her eyes shut tight. "Just got something in my eye..." She roughly rubbed off her shut eye, occasionally glancing up to him.

He eyed her warily. "You shouldn't-"

"Your chest."

He raised an eyebrow. "What?"

She pointed at somewhere on his upper torso. "Your chest is bleeding!"

He slowly moved his gaze down his body...His green shirt had turned quite a dark hue of red where his heart briskly beat, hungrily consuming the rest, he put a hand on his heart -why had he not felt that?- there was a tingling sensation of warmth and dampness, growing stronger each time his heart plunged forward.

"_Ouch._"

* * *

><p>After half an hour of mindlessly pushing the game controller's buttons, Robin decided it wasn't just fun when there was no annoying, lousy speedster around to beat. Behind him Superboy threw him hurt glances-while he had no problem with the clone, he was tired of replacing broken controllers twenty times a week. And not to mention he was really no competition, the guy was indeed good at throwing punches but when it came to throwing cyber ones, he was a <em>real <em>failure.

He sighed. The smell of something burnt told him Megan was up to experimenting for the third time that day_._ Kaldur, sitting on another couch nearby, glanced up from his book, one of his eyebrows high. "Is there a problem, Robin?"

"Nah." He replied slowly. "When do you think Wally's gonna come back?"

"Probably not until sunrise." With that he went back to his book, Robin was pretty sure he saw corners of the Atlantean's mouth twitch. He raised one eyebrow. "Are you reading _The Little Mermaid?"_

The Atlantean did not bother to look up this time. "Yes."

"Oh."

He decided to be quiet about it and go back to his game.

Ten minutes of silence other than Robin's occasional groaning later, there was a strange beep echoing through the mountain, causing the Boy Wonder to drop his game controller with a loud _thud_, his eyes met the Atlantean's for briefest seconds before the three were engulfed by the dark.

"I didn't do anything." came baritone voice of the clone.

Robin stood up slowly. "What is happening?" Kaldur questioned, sounding confused than ever. Was this his first power shortage? Robin mentally snickered.

"I think the power went out." The Boy Wonder replied in a whisper. "And that's _not _normal."

He could hear the fish boy breathing somewhere near him-he had stood up and gotten closer to him, apparently. He opened his mouth to speak, to tell them that they should go check the main computer and probably circuits, but his ears, along with his thoughts, were devoured by a feminine scream.

"_Megan!" _The Boy of Steel roared, his roar echoed in his -_poor- _brain, followed by loud and crude steps.

"Dude, wait!" But the clone's steps were now almost inaudible, growing farther with each _thud._

_Crap. _His hands went to his utility belt, seemingly blindly searching through pockets, although he knew everything in there by heart. A soft click was heard in the dark room, followed by a sigh -a happy, relieved sigh- and then the devouring black void was scared away by the flashlight in the Boy Wonder's hands.

"_Never leave without your utility belt." _He snickered quietly.

Aqualad's brows were furrowed in confusion and distress, his eyes taking their sweet time to apparently adjust to the newborn light. "We should follow him." He spoke quietly, almost warily.

The bird nodded quickly before the two, the leader and the soon-to-be leader of Young Justice, made a dash into the newly illuminated corridor, darkness making way for the two with each step.

"Superboy!" He called out to the clone – to his friend, as the two drew nearer to the kitchen where the other two were. Where they _hoped _their friends were.

But there was no answer. He stole a quick glance at the fish boy, who returned it with a worried look.

"OVER HE-" It was the clone's voice, he could recognize that anywhere, but it was quickly silenced _-by what?_-, suppressed. "Robin!" came a feminine voice as the two made it into the kitchen, flashlight in his hand bringing its occupants to surface.

There was Superboy-there was Superboy _with_ Wally on his back trying to choke him, as the clone used one of his hands to keep the speedster stable on his back, while his other hand had gotten the blonde archer by her collar, said archer now floating mid-air. Behind the three stood Megan, plastered onto a wall, her face screaming shock, horror and pain. He assumed that pile of what looked like dog crap was her cookies.

And Superboy was _angry. _

"What the fuck is going on?" As the Boy Wonder spoke, the archer made a move-for Superboy's head, using the clone's own hands to stabilize herself while delivering a nice kick to his head. Which freed her from his steely grip, as the Boy of Steel plunged backwards, falling on top of Wally who...who didn't really react, what the hell was _that_?

He was just going to speak when a heavy punch was delivered to his face, probably cracking his cheekbone though he wasn't in the mood to examine, sending him right onto the ground with a loud _thud_ and a yelp from his mouth, the flashlight in his hand escaping his grip.

"Artemis, please stop this!" She quickly replied to her team leader with a high kick, which was skilfully blocked by Aqualad with his right arm, who then got a hold of the archer's leg and tossed her-pretty much like thrash-onto the ground. She didn't even make a sound and this time Aqualad did notice it, as he warily stepped backwards, clearly unsure of what he was supposed to do.

A rookie mistake, much to his dismay. With a quick low kick the archer managed to dislocate the Atlantean off the ground, whose back heavily met with the solid floor as Megan emitted a sharp scream.

As for the Boy Wonder, he himself wasn't faring too well. Between trying to avoid Wally's freaking godspeed punches and telling the clone to not hit the speedster-whenever the clone hit something, it would _break_, so he often felt bad for the goons they had to squish during their missions- _oh_, and he was telling Wally to fucking stop it, but that wasn't faring too well either.

It was right then the archer jumped on him. He doubled over and with a swift move, threw her off his back, right onto the speedster who quickly lost his balance under the weight. The clone behind the speedster had been glued to a wall, not doing anything and just getting punched by the Wall-man - though if there was anything his gritted teeth told him under the flashlight it was that he was very, _very_ mad - the wall that welcomed him had cracked under sheer pressure of the speedster's punches. "You know what," Robin spoke as the Boy of Steel threw him an annoyed look. "Just do your thing."

He nodded, though there was something in his dark blue eyes, something...painful. It was just then the speedster and the archer began floating mid-air. _About time. _

He turned behind to see Megan, hands held up high, an exhausted - not due to physical activity but emotional stress- Kaldur right beside her. "Barricade." he spoke. The bird pointed at the clone, quickly grabbing the flashlight, the speedster and his companion mindlessly struggling against the telepathic binds as they hastily made their way out of the kitchen, Megan being the last one to get out.

"Hold the door." Robin ordered, pulling out something from his utility belt. Superboy complied just as Megan freed the speedster and the archer, who, after briefly meeting the ground, made a dash for the door. It was quickly – and probably painfully – smashed into their faces by Superboy who spat , "Now what." between his gritted teeth.

Robin glanced up at Kaldur, then gave a quick nod. The two from the other side of the door were still struggling to pull the door open, which at last clarified that they were freaking insane. It _was _Superboy who held the door close after all.

"Okay." He raised his hand, occupied by something round and grey. "_Move_!"

With that the clone threw himself backwards, the door plunged open and Robin threw the small bat-get in his hand. It made a quick click and soon the door was hungrily devoured by ice. Behind it he could see Wally move, trying to punch through the ice, though Artemis was unable to do so as it had gotten a hold of her right leg.

Megan spoke quietly, almost like a whisper. "_Why_..." He turned away from her, as he hated seeing girls cry (he had no idea what he was supposed to do with them) instead resorting to focus his attention on Kaldur. "What now?" Apparently nobody in the team knew what to do with a crying girl as Superboy just focused his steely gaze on nothing and Kaldur just...pretended to not notice. Or something. It was sad to see that Wally was indeed the ladies' man of the team...However that worked.

"We contact the League." The bird nodded sharply before his hands reached out to his utility belt.

"What..." It was the clone. "Happened to them? They look like zomie-som..."

"_Zombies._" Megan whispered, tears illuminating her face like stars. "Like that movie. Maybe they were infected by a virus..."

Kaldur refrained from commenting, as he had little knowledge on the subject. He had refused to watch that movie anyway (Robin suspected he was afraid of watching scary movies).

Robin rolled his eyes behind his sunglasses. "Don't be ridiculous!" he said loudly. "That only happens in movies." Megan's eyebrows rose up high, her eyes widening, a sigh of relief escaping her lips.

_Or so I hope. _But he didn't voice his thoughts and was once again glad the alien was...nice enough to not pry into his thoughts.

Another light, this time coming from the device in his hand, blended in with the flashlight's. "Well, that's odd." Static could be heard in the corridor. "It's not...working."

Megan sobbed. Robin knew she tried to be quiet, but it hadn't worked.

Something small radiating in a yellow hue told him that Kaldur was attempting to contact his mentor. "No response." His brows were almost _one_.

"This makes me _angry_."

"Yeah, I feel ya." Robin spoke. "We can try the main computer...I have a few batteries and I can get it working, but I'm gonna need time."

Kaldur nodded quickly. "Let's go."

The two led the way, flashlight again occupying the Boy Wonder's hand, as Megan glanced back warily and got a hold of Superboy's tee. She had stopped crying, but it was crystal clear that the alien was _horrified, _especially about her teammates and friends attacking her. Had she done something wrong? Something so horrible to deserve that?

"Well," Superboy tried to reassure her, quickly sparing a glance behind as he spoke. "At least they won't be getting out of that anytime soon."

* * *

><p>"<em>God damn it!<em>" A pale fist roughly met with the machine that housed every system in the mountain. If it was any other time but this, he would've regretted his actions. He _loved_ machines. He loved computers!

Well, probably not anymore.

Behind him he could see Kaldur tiredly massaging his temples, illuminated by screens' light. Megan and Superboy sat even farther, almost hidden by the dark, Megan still sobbing quietly as the clone beside her occasionally glanced up to her, looking pretty confused and embarrassed.

"I can't find what's causing..." the Boy Wonder gritted his teeth. "..._this. _I swear I tried everything-everything's normal, fucking normal! Why isn't it working?"

"We should just go handle things ourselves." the clone spat.

He turned to face him, his glare hidden by his jet-black sunglasses. "And get effected by whatever hit Wally and Artemis?" He asked, though his question was quickly shot down by Megan's sobbing.

The Atlantean seemed lost in thought, drops of sweat occasionally gleaming on his dark skin. "We _must_ contact the League." Somewhere in the dark, the clone groaned.

"I suppose we can just ride there or something." Robin offered, clearly still unhappy about the computer.

"Can you...show us the surveillance cameras, Robin?"

"Yeah." He focused his eyes on the screens before him, quickly typing away on the keyboard. "Here are..._Wow._"

"That doesn't look like clear weather." Superboy stood up as Robin warily eyed him. "Well, the weather channel said it was going to be a _dandy evening._" He stated almost apolitically.

"Well, whatever the fuck it is, it sure as hell ain't normal." The Boy Wonder spat. "It's shining and all."

There wasn't a clear sky, indeed, it was raining, raining something that resembled diamond dust that sparkled in seven colours of rainbow whenever the little lights of surveillance cams reflected on them.

"It's..." Megan spoke softly, almost in a daze. "...raining stars."

And that was just what Robin needed anyway.

The Atlantean crossed his arms as he spoke. "I believe it is safe to assume they are what caused..." He inhaled deeply. "...our teammates' current-"

His words were cut short. There was a feminine yelp, a groan, darkness-the batteries had ran out, leaving them once again in a dark void.

"What, so now we're stuck here?" The clone's brows were furrowed in anger. The Atlantean opened his mouth to reply, but Robin beat him to it. "I think I have an...idea."

Immediately three pairs of different coloured eyes turned on him, unseen to the bird. The clone raised an eyebrow. "Well, speak."

"...I don't think you're gonna like it."

* * *

><p>"What is it like in sewers?"<p>

The Boy Wonder rolled his eyes at the clone's question. "It smells. It's wet. It's dark. Satisfied?"

"Are there white crocodiles?"

"No." He spat. _Because that only happens in movies..._"...Maybe."

Superboy's eyebrows rose up high. "So there _are _white crocodiles?"

"But that's not normal, is it?" Megan spoke (she had stopped crying just minutes ago). "Crocodiles are green."

"There are no," Kaldur sighed wearily. "no, _no_ crocodiles in anywhere near this area."

The Boy Wonder raised an eyebrow.

"My King and I partake in missions to...protect our environment. " He stated quietly.

Robin decided to shut up and focus on the darkness before him instead.

They walked in suffocating silence for a few seconds, flashlight still in his hand-when had he become the flashlighter of the team anyway?

"Uh." He decided to kill the silence, ignoring the fact that everything was like a world-end-bam-slam-zombie-apocalypse movie and that it _creeped the fuck out of him. _"So you walk around in sewers with your mentor?"

The Atlantean pursed his lips. "We-"

"Uh, guys."

Robin sighed. "No, Supey, _no _crocodiles-"

There was a crack. A loud crack. He had squished something with his boot, he looked down (what he had in mind was the shattered skull of a certain speedster by then) to see-

"Ice." He knew what it was, but hearing it from the Atlantean's lips almost froze his veins.

"That...can't be good."

* * *

><p>Woo. Reviews make me write faster.<p>

SLEEP HOW I MISSED YOU


	4. A Hero Without a Name, part I

So I noticed I make little sense when I ramble about the story lolol. Also thanks a huuuugeeee bunch to everyone who reviewed! You have my eternal gratitude.

Disclaimer : Dun own nuffin.

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><p><em>And in winter she comes, when all men are asleep and children are snugged up in warm beds and stray dogs are curled up by trash, thousands of white bees in her wake. For she is their queen bee and certainly the most beautiful of all, her white gauze of stars and her eyes of perfect diamonds; she is made of ice, fair and beautiful, cold as death yet still very much alive. She keeps puzzles within her frost-bound pockets, for not only is she beautiful but also very intelligent, and reason is her treasure. Often at midnight she flies through the streets of the town, and she looks in at the windows, then the ice freezes on panes into wonderful shapes, like flowers and castles. When she sees men wide awake in her travels, she lulls them to sleep with her bewitched voice, for her songs can silence everything and anything...<em>

"_The north wind doth blow,_

_And we shall have snow,_

_And what will the poor robin do then,_

_Poor thing?_

_He'll sit in a barn,_

_And keep himself warm,_

_And hide his head under his wing,_

_Poor thing."_

_IV. A Hero Without a Name, part I._

"_Ice._"

Robin grimaced, his brows furrowed in deep thought and regret. He was supposed to be able to figure out what to use against metahumans-well, Artemis wasn't really one, but that didn't matter right now.

When it all came down to it, would they just kick their asses like they do to those goons, break their bones and shatter their skull, splatter...a friend's blood?

Another side of him spoke of entirely different things. It was the colder, the reasonable side, where the protege of Batman ruled over, not the thirteen years old boy, and he thought of possibilities, analyzed information and formed plans. What was the best thing to do should it...come down to it? Megan would probably be unable to fight much, due to emotional reasons and whatever, Superboy would break more than a few bones, that left him and Aqualad. He didn't quite think of Artemis as a real threat (though he probably wouldn't say that to her face-just in case) but the speedster would require more than...

"We gotta move." he spoke quietly.

_...a few punches. _Kaldur weakly nodded. "Let us go."

And on they went. Behind him came a whisper from the clone's mouth, "It's better than not doing anything.", directed at the alien in an attempt to calm her down. Superboy had potential as a ladies' man, he noted.

Kaldur walked right next to him, his eyes warily scanning the area. He seemed like a lamb separated from its herd, unable to speak, perhaps afraid to speak for he was afraid of omitting wrong words and plans when two teammates were on the line this time. Robin had some zombie experience back when he was still a full-time sidekick, when the Bat was infected by something Hugo Strange made and saw everyone else as zombies. He considered himself to be less freaked out compared to him. Only slightly.

And the Bat had almost turned everyone else into zombies while trying to cure them in his twisted vision of world. And pretty much turned Robin's own vision upside down multiple times while he was at it.

He shuddered. That was a _disaster_.

He wondered if he had enough bat-power to contain a zombified speedster. Would leaving Superboy behind to act as a meatshield of sorts be a good choice of action, since the clone was immune to almost everything? The image of a certain archer, her skull caved in, popped into his mind.

Megan would definitely object anyway. The clone wasn't known for his good behaviour and control.

He inhaled deeply. When, _if _it came down to it, they would fight and be gentle as possible. He certainly hoped they wouldn't have to. Perhaps the two were in some room whining about what the hell was going on and had forgotten all about the others because they were too absorbed in quarreling...

Was he the one to give orders in this situation though?

"Uh."

Three pairs of eyes turned on him. What was he supposed to say, who was he supposed to sound like? Was he supposed to sound like anyone in such a situation? He had never really given orders before, as his mentor wasn't the one to be ordered around, and he himself wasn't exactly the bossy type. What would his mentor say anyway, if he had been there?

If _he _had been there, he would've figured out everything already. Robin had accepted he was no Batman long ago-well, perhaps not long ago. (still he _was_ the closest thing to Batman, ever.) Mr. I-Don't-Care-What-You-Think-Of-Me was the textbook definition of bossy. The guy was _the _boss of everything in any situation; whenever a plan was needed all eyes would turn on him. Including his own. Once in a while he would catch himself searching for his foster dad's silhouette during missions, Kaldur could never replace the confidence and that certain feeling of safety his mentor would stir within him.

He for the life of him could never emulate his mentor's...Bat-like speeches. Bruce was a man of few words, more glares and even more creepy voice. Robin himself was all ponies and rainbows when he talked and it just did _not _have the same effect_._

"We need to be...prepared." Man, he sounded like Kaldur in the end.

"You're not saying that!" The clone roared in his baritone voice. "You want me to _punch my __friends_?"

"No, Supey." He answered slowly. "I want you to be _prepared_."

"I can hear them coming from miles away-"

"Wally," he cut off his sentence roughly. "is faster than your hearing."

There was venom in his voice. He didn't know when it had oozed into his words, or why, but there was. He briefly wondered why before brushing the thought aside. He was doing whatever was best for his remaining teammates, wasn't he? They weren't supposed to see it, be grateful for it, that was irrelevant and unimportant.

_Stop speaking like those two are dead, Rob._

He silently agreed with the voice in his head. "We're almost there." He pointed at somewhere farther ahead in the dark.

There was a small room, one that lacked any doors, illuminated by the flashlight. It was bare except for a maintenance hole, no windows, no light, no nothing. Mr. Crazy-Prepared probably had more plans for the place back when it was still inhabited by the Leaguers.

"I," Kaldur licked his lips solemnly, turning his eyes on the clone. "agree with Robin."

The clone groaned in response, but a quick tug at his tee from the Martian silenced him.

"Kay." Robin decided to pretend the clone didn't obviously think of punching him to the moon right there. "Supey, can you open that?"

"_What?" _The clone asked.

"That." He pointed at the ground.

The clone raised his eyebrows. "That can be _opened_?"

_Uh. _"Yeah, we...go in there."

The clone probably had many more questions, but complied anyway.

His fingers loudly dug deep into the metal. With a short groan he crudely tore the obstacle off the ground and threw it away.

He didn't really have to do that, but Robin wasn't the one to bother the already angry clone about it.

The alien warily eyed the now open hole. "That is a sewer?"

Robin was just about to answer when something hard was delivered to his stomach. He doubled over in pain, gasping heavily to regain his breath, when another blow came right onto his face-_again. And again. And again. _He clenched his teeth in anger, his cheek throbbing heavily in protest.

He was able to catch the next punch, empty green eyes met his sunglasses for briefest seconds, the flashlight broke free of his grasp and fell onto the floor with a loud crash, this time finally breaking. They were devoured in the dark - _great, just great!- _but as the night was his day, he was used to blindness. With a quick low kick, one that lacked any form of hesitance, he removed the speedster off the ground, who met solid floor with a _thud._

_Sorry, pal. I promise I'll buy you a dinner for this. _

"GO!" He screamed, but his scream was silenced by another, one that got higher and higher until he felt his ears bleed, his body crumbling down onto the floor without him noticing.

Black Canary. _-crap crap crap crap!-_

Just when the scream had stopped (unbeknownst to him) and he had managed to regain _some _of his mind, he simply hoped his message was received and made a move for the hole, his ears ringing _terribly_, his eyes teary and his brain doing somersaults each time he took a breath.

His hand had just grasped the corner of the hole when something secured his left ankle. Had Black Canary stopped, or was she still screaming? He wasn't quite sure, her Canary Cry had taken away the sense he relied on the most in the dark.

That didn't stop him. He didn't really know who it was, probably Wally or Artemis if she arrived without him noticing, as the hand was a little...weak to be the canary's. He should know since the woman would often wipe the floor with him, almost as if she enjoyed the act for reasons unknown. He delivered a heavy kick, the heaviest he could manage, to the offender's arm, and when it was finally dislocated, he got up on his hands and plunged himself forward into the hole. Another sound wave drummed his brain, loudly claiming that there would be no other chance, his fingers clenched on two round objects in his belt as he flew downwards. He threw them one after another. One rolled up into the room with a _clack _he was unable to hear, another spawned unholy amounts of ice, covering the hole, which was in an instant shattered into thousands of little pieces that rained down upon him. His back soon met the wet ground, he did a quick yet successful somersault to avoid any harm, and had soon gotten up to his hands then his feet.

_Fucking hell. _Had it worked?

His hands searched through the pockets of his belt until he secured yet another object-another flashlight. The Bat carried about a dozen of them, but his protege wasn't that crazy yet, for he only carried two.

Something touched his shoulder, something he wasn't able to hear and he quickly grabbed it by the—a rather small wrist. He opened the flashlight to see a green face looking at him, features etched with worry and fear, chocolate brown eyes teary.

He didn't really notice, but he had uttered a sigh of relief.

She spoke, said something that resembled "Are you okay?" but he wasn't quite sure. "I can't hear you." He pointed at his ears. Had he spoken too loud?

The girl nodded -surprisingly understanding about the matter- and pointed at something, someone behind her. Superboy sat on the ground, his hands covering his ears and his face filled with hurt.

"Sleep gas. Might be effective on us." He glanced upwards, the fact that nothing was moving spread a sense of relief over him, like butter on bread. Black Canary could wipe the floor with _anyone_, Bruce had once said, _maybe even me_. Robin hadn't believed him, really, and now the blonde was pretty much zombified, but he would be lying if he said he could take care of her. "We move."

The girl opened her mouth to speak, then closed it and nodded quickly, her shaky steps moving towards the clone.

"Where's Kaldur?" He glanced around wherever the light reached, but his eyes were unable to locate the Atlantean. Megan turned to look at him, her eyes wide. He understood.

"It's just sleep gas." He spoke as the clone glanced up on him. "He'll be fine. They all will be. There's no need to go back up there, I mean we'll probably fall asleep if we do, but it's really nothing bad." Unless one of _them_ woke up early-he didn't want to share that with her.

The girl had said something he was unable to hear, but he assumed -hoped- it was a word of agreement.

And with that, they helped the clone up, and the trio went on.

"We there yet?" The clone had gotten considerably grouchy over the hours they had been walking, and the alien had gotten considerably quiet. While the _safety _of sleep gas had finally gotten through his thick skull, it looked like confined, smelly and wet spaces didn't do wonders for his mood.

Robin showed tolerance. He spent most of his time with the god of grouchiness anyway.

"Nope."

"Why do you speak so loud?"

He sighed. "I can't heal as fast as you can, Supey."

...Especially now that there was no Kaldur to balance the team members out.

Still he refrained from joking. Perhaps confined, smelly and wet spaces didn't do wonders for him either, or perhaps it had something to do with the fact that two of their team members had gone insane and they left one very sane member with them.

"Where are we going?"

He fought the urge to rub his nasal bone. "I don't know where we're going." He replied wearily. "The whole city's gone nuts. It's not something within the mountain, something's intercepting my signal and I can't reach _anywhere_."

"Can't you fix it?"

"I don't think I can, Supey." Could he? If he could manage to find what and where, maybe they could...Still aboveseemed extremely dangerous for his taste.

"What do we do then?"

He noticed his voice had become too robotic."I don't know, Supey."

The clone exhaled loudly. "You're the team leader. You should know."

That caught him off guard. "_What_?"

"You're the team leader. You should-"

"Okay, I get it, that wasn't what I-" He waved his free hand around almost apolitically. The clone raised his eyebrows in confusion. "You asked that. You said _what._"

And then finally the urge to rub his nasal bone caught him off guard. "Yeah, uh. We can't walk all the way to the Hall of Justice."

The clone crossed his arms in response. Behind him stood Megan, her eyes still scanning the darkness they left behind, almost as if expecting something to jump out any moment. Robin had handed her the flashlight duty since he had to keep an eye on where they were-though since GPS didn't work his job had become considerably harder. No signal, _nothing_ worked right anymore.

"They might catch up." He was glad the clone didn't ask any details on _they_. "We can't contact the League either. So we do whatever we can."

And for the first time that way, the clone smiled. "What do I do?"

"Power plant." He spoke and there was a smirk forming upon his lips, without him even noticing. "A device capable of something this big needs to be huge, heavy, gluttonous and considerably near. Even if it has batteries it's been like five hours, you need an infinite supply of batteries to run something like that. If we can turn the power off..."

He flashed the little shiny device he had in his hand, which showed a small map of Happy Harbor. "We're here. I think so, at least." He pointed at a little area with his index finger, then moved it across the device's screen, to the west sides of the town. "And we gotta go here. Should take about half an hour or so."

The clone nodded sharply. The alien, on the other hand, hadn't even reacted.

"You okay, Megan?" Robin questioned softly.

The girl turned her brown eyes on him. She was biting her lips quite hard, he thought if she kept at it her lips would bleed.

And slowly, even unwillingly, she nodded.

"Kay." With that he turned behind and started walking away. Perhaps quicker than he wanted to, for he wanted to avoid her painful expression. He just _wasn_'_t _good with stuff like that. Like his mentor.

After that, the silence consumed them. He had regained some of his hearing, though he suspected the damage was more serious than he thought. His ears welcomed the silence. The only thing that could be heard was their slippery footsteps echoing in the dark.

"I hear something." Well, maybe not. He glanced at the clone over his shoulder. "There." The clone pointed at nothing.

He furrowed his brows. Could it be Wally, had he caught up with them? A sight of man in yellow clothing, a middle-aged man with a whitening beard, stepping into the light from one of those little gaps that housed valves and all sorts of circuits, proved his thoughts wrong. A maintenance hole was open up above him, but did nothing to light his features for it was already dark. Yet his body had tensed instantly at the almost not suspicious sight, but the man didn't move, instead simply stared at them, nothing present in his eyes.

"Hello?" He spoke warily.

The man didn't react.

"Robin." It was the Martian. "I...I can't feel anything from him."

"_Okaaay_..." He took a step back ever so slowly. Perhaps it would be best if he just went and knocked the guy out?

"Water!" He didn't have quite have time to however. "I hear water!"

"Go up!" He commanded as he dashed for the ladder. As soon as he got a hold of it he was hearing it too-and that just _wasn't_ good.

He looked down as he climbed upwards, Megan floated right above the clone, who had just gotten a hold of the man, still in his dead-like daze, as he made a move for the ladder as well. "Superboy!" He cried. "Come on, dude!"

But it was too late. Within a mere second he could _see _the water, and in the next one it had devoured his friend and the man he was trying to save.

"NO!" The alien screeched, the torrent washing her away from the safety, or at least what they had hoped was safety. He plunged forward, barely managing to get a hold of her hand as his other hand held the ladder in a death grip-it fucking _hurt _but he wasn't about to care.

"MEGAN!" Could she hear him, no, could she understand his words anymore? "MEGAN, I CAN'T HOLD MUCH LONGER!" The water had gotten up to his knee, thousands of unseen hands trying to pull him downwards his death -_oh fuck fuck fuck- _he wasn't, they _weren't_ _supposed to die there! _

She uttered a word, a single word, but it was lost.

Her eyes finally glowed with power. Something took a hold of his body, which almost relaxed in response. And they quickly floated above, away from the water, Megan's eyes teary, his own not beneath the safety of his sunglasses anymore, to somewhere away from death.

He probably couldn't have been more wrong.

It wasn't raining, not anymore. The ground glittered in seven colours of the rainbow. The street lights illuminated their surroundings-perhaps he was correct about his guess?- and brought danger into light.

They were surrounded, completely surrounded. There were men, women, children, elderly, makeshift weapons and bare fists raised in a deadly stance. Some wore suits and some wore punk-style clothing-they were just normal citizens, their hollow gaze locked on the two heroes they were protected by.

His bright blue eyes caught her chocolate brown eyes for mere seconds, before he cried out loud.

"_RUN!_"

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><p>Yeah, I finally managed to write a shorter chapter. FF doesn't let me upload anything, am I the only one with this problem? (had to export-edit a chap for this)<p>

There is a new character coming next chapter. I think. Derp.

I'm not writing those little paragraphs in italics to invoke literary pleasure in you. No, really, you'll notice they are somewhat related to their respective chapters. So I suppose that means there's a wicked hobgoblin and a Snow Queen somewhere lol?

Reviews, they make me write faster!


	5. A Hero Without a Name, part II

My chapters are getting shorter hahaha.

Disclaimer : Don't own nothing. No, really.

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><p><em>They were surrounded, completely surrounded. There were men, women, children, elderly, makeshift weapons and bare fists raised in a deadly stance. Some wore suits and some wore punk-style clothing-they were just normal citizens, their hollow gaze locked on the two heroes they were protected by.<em>

_His bright blue eyes caught her chocolate brown eyes for mere seconds, before he cried out loud._

"_RUN!_"

_A Hero Without a Name, part II._

_"Then her heart would lie in my hand, more fast than in an iron band..."_

They came after him the second he took a step, one hundred steps for his single one. They thought he was an easy target –he _was_ an easy target compared to his green-skinned companion – however he begged to differ.

He had refused to fight, refused to take down his well-trained punches on a defenseless civilian, refused to use bat-gets against innocents-he was ready to do many things people would consider horrible, but he would _never_ defile his mentor's ideals. His mind was going about not where they _were_, but where they were _supposed to go, _though they weren't really going anywhere from what he could tell. He flew above people, his grappling hook held in a death grasp, for they would throw rocks and cellphones and whatever available at them, and he was afraid to let the fragile safety he had managed to find shatter into pieces. They would often manage to climb up on a pole or try to jump on Megan who stayed far too close to ground to protect Robin from hurtful things that came at them at accelerated speeds (while ignoring Robin's retorts altogether). Some people, the ones that weren't fast or young enough to leave their houses glued their faces to the windows as they went past by, or tried to climb up to roofs from windows, hungrily waiting for him on wherever they thought he would land. It was as if the whole town was going after the heroes, it was a dog hunt and there were far too many hunters, ones that stared at them from open windows or dark corners of the town.

First the two were fairly kind; it was the entry level of the game, Megan would softly –however that worked- throw people away with her telekinesis, or fly crazier ones to safety, while Robin took the lead to the power plant, flying from one building to another. Or to somewhere away from the crowd. It was soon apparent that there was no end to it, just about then Megan stopped being kind. It took Robin a straight hit to the Martian's head, one that made her bleed though now it was considered trivial, to resort to smallest explosions he hid in his pockets. It was the moment his grappling hook met air, the building he hopelessly aimed for proved to be too far for his reach, and his pockets felt light, that he had begun to not care whatever he was throwing at people as long as it kept them hell away. He had cleared a path close enough to the building he previously aimed at, those people could have a few broken bones (that was pretty much the only thing that kept them immobilized) for all he cared, there were _cops _among themand they were _firing their guns_ at them for fuck's sake!

Batman wouldn't do that. He was no Batman.

_Robin. _The Martian's voice rang in his head. _There are others coming towards us and more are coming from those weird little houses…_

He assumed they weren't coming to greet them warmly. The images of laser beams and busty redheads popped into his mind. They were fairly close to that area, he could only hope that those people were still busy trying to avoid the League's grasp.

There was nothing but prefabricated houses in his sight anymore, they were close to the dock where he would no longer fly high. He had shared that information with the Martian, though he showed enough kindness to spare her his own worries; the girl was terrified enough as it was.

_We gotta keep going. _For a second her emotions brushed past him, and he felt nothing but sheer pressure of fear. _Can you keep it up?_

_I will. _She obviously not wished to speak further. Emotional pain and stress could strain a telepath's powers, his mentor had once said, as he dashed to the edge of the roof he was perched upon.

He just hoped she had enough willpower to keep herself safe and threw three bombs, one after another, at the crowd that waited below him. There was no other enough tall building nearby; the bird had to land at last. After a series of loud explosions he was unfazed by, his boots met the newly cleared path and he made a run, more explosives secured in his hands. He freaking hoped the dock would be emptier, though since there was an army of crazy civilians coming after them he wondered if that ever mattered.

_Bam. _A bullet whistled past him. A quick glance told him it was the security guard of god knows where, followed by other two, and more less dangerous people he didn't bother to count. They were no cops and that somewhat relieved him, as he had inflicted some serious damage on the cops that were once after them and doubted he could get away with just a lecture this time.

He secured a batarang from his belt, and the moment it was free from his grasp more bullets flew past him-he just got damn lucky this time and he knew that. Another explosion rang in his ears though he didn't bother to look back- more bullets told him he hadn't managed to clear all three, and he briskly got away from them, hiding behind a prefabricated house just in time. The two had strayed from their path, which was now considerably longer, though not impossible. He knew the area very well, he had memorized everything down to light poles when they were given that crazy mission, the one that involved freaking cold roofs and books.

When had he become so oblivious to people's lives anyway?

Probably said people coming after their own lives helped.

There was a sound, something that resembled footsteps but only louder, and he knew he had no time to react. _Shit! _It was a guy, he didn't manage to get a clear look though he very well saw the knife secured in his hands. He had probably waited to ambush him on a roof or something, and Robin had given him his chance when he chose to move all of his attention on armed people. Was he even supposed to produce such thoughts when he was about to get stabbed?

Probably not.

"ROBIN!" The impact never came, there was only the sick sound of a bone or two breaking, he had just gotten hold of a bat-net by then. The guy went away flying at a speed that would make Wally jealous, one of his feet bent in a way it was obviously not supposed to. Robin didn't have time to express his gratitude, as gunshots silenced him and a feminine scream that made him wish he had never regained his sense of hearing.

_God no, no, no! _The bat-net broke free from his grasp, albeit for no use as it was soon followed by more explosives, a move purely on instinct on Robin's part. Their tail was sent flying a few feet away though he no longer cared-his teammate, she had...

He dashed forward, the Martian just hung on air that he was beginning to think she was okay -though she was not responding to his words, why was she not responding?- no, no, _no_!

Then the alien fell. He knew she would, he was not the one to lose hope but he was no fool either. Her body met the ground with a solid _thud _as he hadn't managed to get there in time to catch her.

He kneeled down, the Martian's eyes were no longer open-the wound, where was the wound?- was she breathing, what colour was her blood?

"Fuck _no!-_"

Her eyes flickered open, filled with horror, hatred, sorrow and tears. He had felt a sense of relief but it was far too soon diminished, devoured by a feeling he would rather not name.

"I'm…" The alien spoke. There was a loud breath, and for the umpteenth time that day tears cascaded down her face as the Boy Wonder turned her body on her back. "My leg…hurts…"

He hadn't hesitated; he was used to blood, whatever colour it was. There was a deep hole on her right leg, a few good inches below her knee, and it threw up more blood each second he wasted, staining his hands with the alien's substance of life. "What should I do?" He gritted his teeth. He had never treated a Martian before, hell, the closest non-human thing he ever treated was a freaking _dog._

"Megan-" was what he was saying as the answer he expected never came, and his blue gaze moved up to her eyes, which were now staring at something unknown to him in pure and clean horror. He follower her gaze, and soon enough his own too was filled with horror-sometimes he wished he would not always be correct.

There were people, so many people, in a rather harmonious run towards the young heroes and for the first time in his whole life, even after the time he took the heroic mantle, he considered himself to be no longer alive.

"_No, no, no…_" The Martian cried. "Make them stop…" But how, how in the god fucking damned world? Did he even have that many explosives? How far would they go with a Martian on his back? Were they going to go down without a fight?

He didn't consider to abandon his teammate. And the alien didn't offer him to.

He briefly wondered what Alfred was doing, if the old man had prepared those almond cookies he promised a while ago. The history essay was due to Monday. Was Bruce still working in his cave or had he noticed something was odd and was on his way to save his son? He was going to appear out of nowhere just in a bit, he was. And the two stood there quietly, the Martian cried and uttered words he could not understand, he thought of irrelevant things until countless faces were visible to him, and _oh boy _were they going to die in just a few minutes. What a bummer…

They were going to die. They were going to die.

And while he avoided the truth until it came crashing right into his face, he was terrified of death. The thought of his parents brushed past his thoughts, but did little to soothe him, as all he could see or recall was their…fall.

Then there was a loud screech, and then dust assaulted his nostrils and eyes-he could no longer see anything but black, the metallic black of a car. It stood between the teenagers and their innocent-by-default assaulters, and it was no Batmobile, no, it was a freaking old Honda.

"What the fuck are you doing?" It was a woman. "Get in the damn car!"

Before he knew he was already crudely forced into a car, the Martian soon landed on top of him with a painful yelp, the door crashing right into its place with a loud creak. (Seriously, why did he have to be the bottom every single time?)

"What the fucking fuck!" Tires screeched just as the woman seated herself upon the driver's seat with a rough move. "That's not how you behave in zombie apocalypses!"

He would've answered her, _what the hell was that anyway_, if he hadn't felt the Martian's blood oozing onto his skin. _Damn. _He wrapped his arms around the alien's upper torso and moved her up to the couch, earning him a painful gasp. "You okay?" Megan collapsed on the seat with what slightly resembled a nod.

"Dang." The woman spoke. "That looks bad."

A quick glance over his shoulder didn't give him more than a view of the woman's dark blue eyes, which reflected upon the rear-view mirror she had just adjusted to her liking.

"Gotta remove the-" There was a very loud _thud _and another screech from the car, which now yanked around carelessly. A guy just flew past the window and if the situation didn't look so grim, Robin would've waved at him.

There were more _thuds_ and colourful words from the woman's mouth, and more people quite literally flew by. "What the hell are you doing?" Robin roared, but it quickly turned into a yelp as the woman crudely pulled the car to the left, -_thud- _some other guy just desperately hung on the car before he was torn apart from it, the woman hitting the gas with enough force to tear a continent apart. "Fucking saving you, so shut the fuck up!_"_

He gritted his teeth. "Megan, do I apply pressure on the wound?" He had no idea about the alien physiology and the very last thing he could ever want at that moment was to accidentally kill her.

She could not answer however, as they were plunged to the right, his shoulder painfully colliding with the car. "Can't you drive straight?"

The woman took another sharp left. "I don't even have a license!"

_Brilliant._

She had just begun to show off her vocabulary, and boy was the Martian going to bombard him with questions if they both survived this, which seemed more unlikely as seconds flew by. The woman yanked the car to left and right with no care and a lot of apparent rage. "Remove the bullet!"

"How the hell am I even supposed to do that?"

"The first-aid-" She screeched. _–thud- _"-kit!" The car met a guy head-on, who was briefly glued to the front window until the woman took a sharp left, freeing their view of the road.

Just then, there was a loud crash, and he was plunged backwards. "Shit!" They had crashed into the safety bars and the ocean now stood before them in all its glory. "For fuck-"

Robin was unable to complete his sentence, which the woman paid no heed to. And so did another woman who was now trying to punch her way into the car. There was a loud curse, and the woman hit the gas once again, crashing right back into the woman who was bludgeoned into the dark, far behind a handful of equally zombified citizens.

"Oh those fucking little-" And on they went, at speeds Robin would rather not know, occasionally going right and left for no apparent reason, yanking the teenagers along. The woman had relaxed considerably until Robin got a hold of the steering wheel, and hell she could rival Black Canary if she kept on screaming like that! "I'm going to drive, okay?" There was now a highly audible groan. "_Help her_."

The woman complied. As they switched seats he spared her a thorough examination, and the woman returned his gesture rather rudely. A sharp chin, full lips, heart shaped face, long ebony hair glued to it with sweat. She wore a lab coat, nothing fancy underneath it from what he could tell, no accessories but a name card on her coat, though all he could read was the first letter of the name written on it.

"Well, now you don't see a green girl every day." She spoke softly, directed at no one in particular. "Wait, where the hell are we going?"

"The power plant." It sounded like it was the best thing to do…in a zombie apocalypse. Sometimes things made just no sense. "I took the second right from here, yeah?"

"Just _why the fucking hell _are we going to the power plant?" She questioned between Megan's gasps and sounds of flesh getting cut, followed by a whisper that resembled _got it_. "What about some military base? Another city? I mean I'm not that experienced on zombie apocalypses, but what are do you plan to do in a power plant?"

"I might be able to stop this crap." He spoke through his clenched teeth.

"You gonna play the hero?" She chuckled. "Did ya borrow daddy's gun?" Of course there was no damn person in the whole country who _didn't _know who he was! He had to keep this woman away from the truth, preferably far, far away, and he doubted the possibility of that ever happening in such a situation. Megan was wounded and he _needed _his gadgets, he was not worth much without them.

Heavens knew he_ was_ fucking screwed and wasn't really going to get away with it this time…Ironically it was the least of his concerns at that moment.

"I'm…" He pondered for a bit before speaking again."…lucky."

"I'm sure daddy would be proud of you, Lucky." He glared at her over his shoulder. "Now we go back."

_Oh what the hell_. Why did women have to question everything anyway? He wondered if a quick punch would knock her out. "Look, I told you-"

"Yeah." She cut him short. "The whole thing's coming from the weather tower."

He turned to stare at her indecorously, his mouth agape. "_What_?"

"I'm Camelia. Camelia Delvapore, the atmospheric physicist." She spoke. "Feel free to Google me. I work at the research facility there…" There was a short pause.

"Well, not anymore I guess."

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><p>Kudos to you if you noticed the meaning of her name. I don't exactly own her. I'll get there soon enough...I hope lol. Reviews are appreciated.<p>

So yeah, SLEEP.


	6. The Pendulum

A quick update. I'm so proud of myself! . Even though no one reviewed last chapter...

Disclaimer: Don't own. Those three verses are based on a poem from this fairy tale called Firebird, so I don't actually own that either.

Oh, and to clear something up, the reason I picked a Honda is because Robin is, well, not tall...at all. Yeah. On with the story!

* * *

><p><em>Who rides to the right shall know loss,<em>

_Who rides to the left shall know death,_

_Who rides straightforward shall know both._

_VI. The Pendulum_

_"I'm Camelia. Camelia Delvapore, the atmospheric physicist." She spoke. "Feel free to Google me. I work at the research facility there…Well, not anymore I guess. "_

In a sudden movement the car came to a halt, tires screeching out their anger in response. "_Explain._" he hissed through his teeth.

"Yeah." She spoke, almost in mockery, but a glare from the bird's end told her he meant _business. _"Okay, okay. Gee, you're too serious for a kid."

"When I say I work there, I don't mean I'm exactly employed-" the boy raised one of his eyebrows in response. "I'm _officially _employed at a private research facility in Italy, owned by a company called _Pocaire Gaoithe _or PG Weather for short - feel free to Google that too. We work on those things that tell you tomorrow's weather, but on a more…serious scale."

"Like what?" He questioned. "Controlling the weather?"

There was a small smile on her lips. "Only in theory." This wasn't going to be pretty.

"Well, you wouldn't know it, but we're the only private company whose weather readings are near perfect." She spoke. "Of course it's no big deal when the weather channel tells you that the weather's nice and then it rains-but our line of work is one that requires everything to be one hundred percent accurate."

"Get to _the_ _point." _

"You don't have many friends your age, do you?" That one stung, but Robin ignored it, resorting to a glare in response. "Yeah, well, you wouldn't know the weather tower here is the most advanced one you can find in States either. No, wait, you _would,_ your daddy was invited to the welcome party and all."

He had stopped trying to memorize everywhere Bruce ever went long ago, but honestly, it wasn't like they opened a weather tower every week. Was she talking about that one where Firefly attacked? He could vaguely remember Bruce mentioning a weather tower, but he was not one hundred percent sureand _that _toowas required in _his_ line of work.

"So the big guys thought, why not work together? They sent me and the other guys I worked with, but when we got here they told us to work on some weather reader thing and _not _the big one we spent _years _on. We were all like, what the hell? Then they went and _forbid _us from ever getting close to _our _project!"

He emitted a small sigh-man, that storyline was horribly similar to one or two he had heard from some villains who told him their sob stories for no apparent reason. "You wanted revenge?" He didn't go around and tell people why he became Robin, did he?

"Well, yeah, I _did_." She moved her gaze up to the sapphire coloured sky, the sun would show himself soon enough. "But I didn't have to. 'Cause, well, zombie apocalypse?"

He couldn't help but notice she used _well _far too many times and for no little reason. "What was the project?"

"Well, I'm not supposed to-"

He gritted his teeth. "Tell me and I'll make sure they pay for what they did."

The physicist sighed, still wary for a reason unknown to him, but considerably calm. "Weather controlling."

_Great. _"That's what made…" He pointed at the sky. "…_this _happen?"

Her eyes widened with surprise. "What-_no-"_

"That's impossible." Came the tired, quiet voice of the alien. Robin turned behind to face her, flinching when his sudden movement caused her to almost jump, her hands clasped together in an attempt to stay calm. "This matter-it's foreign to earth's atmosphere. You can't simply make things rain…Unless you sprinkle the stars on people from above the clouds."

"If that was the case, the League would have been done with this long ago." He stated as his steely gaze once again focused on the woman. She raised an eyebrow in protest, "You didn't _let me finish!_"

He shot her a tired look.

"Well, the green girl is right. I'm remotely glad to have someone who understands what I say, even if she's, well, green."

_God, take me now. _

"As I was saying," she removed a box from her overly crowded pockets, which held a pair of glasses within. She lazily moved her hands to put them over her eyes. "You can't make things rain."

"What the hell was the point of that sob story then?" Megan slightly fidgeted at his behavior.

"The knowledge." She spat. "There was no device, but a single file we kept the blueprints, calculations and ideas within, and in the hands a trained madman it's just a recipe. The recipe to make walnut cookies, but he wants pistachio cookies. And from what I can tell, he got it right."

"You go around giving people blueprints of a _weather controlling device_?"

"Yeah, with a glass of milk and chocolate chips." She spoke, venom apparent in her voice. "_What _do you think?"

There was a silence, one Robin gladly welcomed as he took quick glances at the woman, who removed another small box from her pocket and lazily withdrew a single cigarette from within. She didn't appear to be scared or even surprised; if there was anything he understood from that look Megan threw at him, it was that the woman wasn't the one to be trusted. Or completely out of it.

Which made him wonder, why hadn't Megan created a mental link?

He wondered if a mental shout or something would get his point across, but brushed the thought aside, deciding to focus on somewhere _not_ inside the car. The sun blinked from the horizon, lazy as the woman behind him, announcing the arrival of a new day-they didn't sleep or eat much in the previous one, it reminded him. Would a hamburger made by a zombified McDonald's staff taste any different?

He sighed, resisting the urge to just bash his head to the steering wheel until he passed out. He was as uncomfortable as it was; his feet could barely reach the pedals, which forced him into an awkward position, and it made his neck freaking hurt. At least the car was small enough, albeit suffocating and smelled of smoke, though he wasn't the one to complain-as he considered the physicist to be the definition of _Traffic Monster. _

He was less than surprised when the smell of smoke reached his nose. "Don't smoke in the car."

The woman groaned as she made her way to the seat next to Robin, Megan wrinkling her nose in disgust and confusion behind her. "My car, my rules, kid."

She threw him a sleepy look, Robin groaned in return, his hand moving towards the handle beside him-if he wasn't uncomfortable before, he sure as hell was _now_.

"Uh-uh, that's not a smart thing to do."

He shot her a glare. "And why is that?" Behind him came the awkward coughs from the Martian.

Camelia rolled her eyes in response. "You never watched any zombie flicks?" Was that it? Was she a zombie fanatic, was that why she was that cool about the whole situation? "Zombies love jumping into cars from windows, kid."

He knew if the situation was any different, he would've laughed. He noticed he had gotten used to the smell of smoke, but same couldn't be said about Megan, who still quietly coughed now and then, almost like she didn't want to bother anyone.

"What…" came the silent voice of the alien, her index finger pointing at the woman in confusion. "…is that horrible thing?"

"A smoke." The physicist responded. "You want some? Here, you can take a whiff from mine."

"She's _underage._" He hissed through his teeth.

"Right." She had stopped trying to make the Martian _take a whiff_, probably due to said Martian's apparent disgust of the substance in her hand. "Well, you're driving, yeah?"

That he was. "You're unfortunately the only adult around here and _you're a horrible driver._"

She almost pouted, her brows furrowing in unison. "The cop I met like last week told me the same thing when he took my lic-my stuff. I mean, where's my respect? I pay my taxes! I help old ladies cross the street!"

He rolled his eyes in response, focusing on the empty road that now seemed even longer.

"I even…" She withdrew a rubik cube from her pocket, a small pout adorning her lips, as if she was not satisfied with the cubic object in her hands. "…let you go wherever you please. With _my _car. With an _alien_ in the back."

He turned to reply, but for brief seconds his mouth hung open, the woman beside him began solving the colorful cube at a frightening speed. "Why are you so calm?" He questioned, and at an instant noticed the threatening tone hidden within his words, somewhat resembling that of his mentor's, which satisfied him.

"Well," she spoke, the puzzle in her hands now completely solved. She examined it for brief seconds before stuffing it back to her pocket. "That thing on your waist helps."

She hadn't pointed at his-there was nothing else she could have pointed at, nothing, he knew. And his blood froze in his veins. The alien's eyes were widened with the fraction of shock. He wanted to speak, he was a damn good liar, he could get out of this safely. He was _trained to_ get out of this safely.

"You can play the fool if you want." She shrugged. "The Fool is my favourite card."

"_Who the fucking hell are you?_" If Bats were here, he would've been damn proud to hear his protégé sound very much like him. On the second thought, if Bats were here Robin wouldn't be able to talk like that. The man had strict no-swearing rules.

The physicist's hands rose in an attempt to calm him down. "Whoah whoah now, kid. I mean no harm. I _really _mean no harm." A glare from the boy announced he was _not _satisfied. "Did they teach you how to remove bullets at school?"

"My father was a doctor."

"And if my father was a pilot I would be able to fly, right?"

She ignored his retort. "I'm one of those people you and your super-hot boss saved from one of those crazy ass villains, the one with a question mark on his ass. What do they call him? Mystery Man? Question?" He ignored the adjective left to the word _boss _and her question with it_. _"But you don't remember. Of course you don't remember, you guys save like one thousand people each week."

"Great." Out of all atmospheric physicists, he had to get stuck with the one he saved before. Was there not even a single deity that liked him? Only slightly? He rubbed his nasal bone in an attempt to calm the incoming headache down.

"You were so _cool_ when you did your thing to that weirdo's employees." The mockery in her voice was like a freaking tsunami that devoured him at an instant. A whisper that resembled _Robin _came from behind. If he wasn't screwed before, _well_, now he fucking was!

"And you were the one who untied me, so, well, I got a good look at you." She, again from her pocket, withdrew a pen, giving Robin a glimpse of a small book that read _Master Sudoku _on it-which made him wonder, were her pockets connected to the intergalactic space?

"Wanna sign my boobs?"

_Oh god. _The whole universe hated him. And he hated the whole universe back.

She chuckled. "I kid, I kid. I don't let pubescent boys sign my boobs."

"That's awesome." He retorted, unamused. "The file you were talking about, where is it kept?"

She pondered for a bit. "One floor above where I work. Might wanna call your computer geek buddies. Well, if you have some. Our system is like the Pentagon of the internet."

He threw her a smirk. "Yeah, right, no. On a scale from one to ten, how would you rate the security of the place?"

"Well, I have the card. I mean, the card key. It only works up to the floor I work at and I assure you, you can't kick the doors open there." She opened the window to throw the remnants of smoke, quickly closing it afterwards. (For no real reason as Robin was certain no one was around…Unless Wally caught up with him, but how in the hell would his zombie best friend know where he was?) Within a matter of seconds there was another one between her lips, occasional coughs coming from the alien once again. Robin groaned. "Stop smoking."

"I can't. I can't function right if I'm not smoking." She adjusted her glasses for no apparent reason. "I'm a chain smoker, I suppose. But I can quit whenever I want. And you want me to work right, yeah?" For some reason she spoke faster than her usual lazy pace.

"Right." There was a cocky smirk adorning his lips for mere seconds, before it left its place to another frown. "I want that card."

"Yeah? What about safer places?" She raised one eyebrow. "I told you, this wasn't what we worked on, our project wasn't supposed to make sparkly things rain. What the hell do you plan to do with that kinda information?"

He rubbed his temples, he could feel a headache coming, but he wasn't sure if it was due to stress or hunger. "I want to understand how it works."

"Yeah? That thing's way above elementary level, kid."

"I know _more_ than you think." He glared at her.

"Well, I suppose you do, since you go around jumping from building to building and all."

He resisted the urge to cave her nose in. This whole situation wasn't doing wonders for his mood and lack of sleep made it only worse. "I'll leave and find another transportation method…"

_Like hotwiring a car._

"Meanwhile you do me a goddamn favour and get my friend to safety. Without crashing into poles. Think of it as payback for saving you."

"Well-"

"_No._"

Robin turned his head to face the alien. "What?"

The girl was glaring at him. She was glaring at him with mountains of hatred and fury apparent in her once sweet chocolaty eyes, her fists clenched. "No. I said no."

Robin stared at her in confusion, unable to comprehend her words. The physicist beside him pursed her lips, probably having decided to be quiet about the matter.

"Err…" Robin spoke. "No to what?"

Her glare was now stronger than ever, "No to everything you said!"

The bird's confusion was soon replaced by anger. "Look, we have to fix this, alright? We have to do it for our teammates-"

"Yes, _teammates!_" She screeched. "Because we're a _team! _And you don't get to make decisions like that! You don't dump a teammate away-"

"You're _wounded! _How in the goddamn hell do you plan to accompany me?" He hissed. "Why don't you go back to others if you're so incredibly _bothered_? You can fly, can't you?"

"I wo-would have!" Great, now he made a girl cry. Was there anything considerably good he had done in past 24 hours? "I _would have! _S-Superboy was…"

"Why didn't you?" He spat, his attempts to calm himself down proving to be fruitless.

"You pretend to be invi-" She was caught by a series of sobs. "You're only _human!_"

There was a silence. One would have thought the two teenagers had calmed down, but if there was anything apparent in the way Camelia ever so slowly moved _away_ from the two, it was that this was indeed a silence before storm.

"_That _again?" His voice was caught in a vortex of tremor, however hard he tried to stop it. "What the hell should _I _have done? Have a hysteria crisis and slow people down, like you? Should I do nothing and be a burden to people? Should I find myself a dark corner to hide and rock back and forth in fetal position? Maybe I should have gone after _Superboy_! Since he is _indestructible _and all he surely needs help! "

"But I—"

"_No._" He spat the word out like venom. "You are in _no_ place to lecture me about how teams work."

The alien stayed silent, other than a few words of apology and sobs.

"Why the hell did you save me anyway, Megan?" He knew he won the battle, but a part of him still wanted to keep going, to let the anger out, and the alien was the unfortunate and perhaps the innocent one that stood on its path. "Because I'm _human_? Even though I have the most experience? _Why? _I would be long dead if I didn't know how to take care of myself! Why do I have to prove myself again and again? I could take that hit, I could-"

"Okay, okay, okay." Robin was incredibly annoyed at the smoky obstacle that blocked his view of the Martian. "Time-out. No yelling in the car. Man, you have some lungs, kid. " His nostrils flared with anger in response.

"The tension here, well, I can give it a hug if I want to. But I don't want to, because I heard from somewhere that you pubescents call this sexual tension or something. Don't think I'm ready for green nipples just yet, so please keep your clothes intact, yeah?"

"What does all of this have anything to do with _you?_" He hissed. "What the fuck do you want?"

"Well," She pondered for a bit. Robin noticed she had moved to her third cigarette and was holding the fourth ready in her hand. "It's my project. I want my project."

"And you're going to, _how_?" The anger was still apparent, but there was a tint of mockery in his voice. "You don't think I'm just going to hand it over?"

"In fact I do, yeah. You're going to give it to me." She threw him a lazy look. "If you want to keep your identity intact."

* * *

><p>Boom.<p> 


	7. Scacchi Alla Rabiosa

Exams. Nobody loves exams. My last exam's like on Caturday so I should be able to update more frequently after that...I mean, if anyone cares. /sadface

Yup, no rhyme/etc. this chapter. I couldn't come up with anything from my memory this chapter and I've been too busy to dig up one...

Disclaimer : My cliche group of survivors senses are tingling._  
><em>

Scacchi Alla Rabiosa

_- Mad Queen's Chess -_

"Hey, dood! Dood! Wake up!"

There was an audible groan, followed by words understandable only to those who could speak the language of the sea.

"_Leave me alone. I am resting."_

Kaldur didn't open his eyes, he didn't really want to. There was a soft, almost motherly feeling that embraced all of his cells and it strangely reminded him of his home, Atlantis. From afar came the voices he longed for ever since he stepped on surface world, the quiet whistles of algae, familiar chants sung-often with little grace- by students, Queen Mera's steely commands…

He opened one of his eyes to glance at his surroundings. The watery sky of Atlantis stood above him, as peaceful as ever. He laid where he assumed to be the outskirts of the kingdom, where everything was exactly same as it was in his memories, fitting like a puzzle.

And there was a _fish. _Now since he was deep beneath the ocean and all that was not such a surprising sight, but this one, this _fish _strangely resembled that noisy Atlantic blue tang from The Little Mermaid. He recalled his name to be Flounder, which did not really make sense as the fish was _not _a flounder, he was an _Atlantic blue tang surgeonfish. _

The fish, blue tang, Flounder, _whatever _now stared at him, his eyes wide.

Kaldur didn't question what he was doing in Atlantis. He didn't question _how _he even got there, he didn't question _why _that goddamned fish looked like he was about to swallow the Atlantean as a whole. Instead he scratched his head and blurted out a question that made sense only to him.

"How do I get to Ariel?"

The fish groaned. "Dood, what the hell do I know? I'm a fish!"

He wanted to protest, he did. He was just about to say that the fish was supposed to be the redheaded mermaid's best friend or something along those lines when he was suddenly consumed by the most terrible headache ever. His world began to spin at frightening speeds- no, was he the one spinning, or was it really the world? Did world actually spin at such speeds?

And yet, for some reason, the image of Flounder was clear as ever.

"Dood." He spoke. "Do yourself a favour and _stay in wate-_

…and then his whole world was consumed by black, which he gladly welcomed.

* * *

><p><em>Stay in water. <em>

Kaldur knew he wasn't in any kind of water the moment he woke up. The floor beneath him was steely and freezing, there was an odd stench that was definitely not something of his homeland and _god_, did his head freaking _hurt. _

A quick glance to his surroundings didn't provide him more than he already had – darkness- but it helped him to clear his vision. He was in some kind of room, stone-cold surface world, there was his team, there were sharp screams and…flashlights…

_Poseidon help us. _

Kaldur didn't know just how quick he got up to his feet - an act clearly unhealthy for him as world again danced around-there was nothing in sight, nothing but the darkness, but it wasn't like he had any kind of night vision.

With that the patterns on his arms shone, with power and magic, illuminating his surroundings. And there indeed was nothing. The Atlantean was alone.

He noticed signs of a battle, all too familiar to the ocean-dweller. He could vaguely remember Wally holding onto his legs and a scream that rendered him completely useless – Black Canary, he noted. Yet neither the speedster nor the senior bird were around, which wasn't actually _bad _as he knew going against the Leaguer was anything but _good _and probably infinitely painful. He took a step back and almost fell into- into a _hole _in the process.

Right, it was probably a memento from Robin and his plan. Who wasn't around to be seen, along with the rest of the team.

Kaldur assumed he was knocked out cold by something unknown to him and the rest of the team most likely considered it to be highly disadvantageous to go up again. He felt neither anger nor disappointment; he trusted his team and knew they wouldn't act without a good reason to do so. And whatever reasons they had, he would probably to the same if the roles were reversed.

Well, maybe he exaggerated that whole I-trust-my-team thing; they _did _abandon him to his fate which _could have been_ quite painful if Black Canary were around. And that annoyed him. Perhaps it did more than just to annoy him. His teammates weren't exactly the epitomes of _responsibility. _It was already freaking hard trusting a bubbly alien and a guy who ran on _rage _with his life_._ He wanted to burst that balloon of confidence Robin carried around with a goddamn needle, no matter how much respect he had for the kid. And that certain speedster, when was he going to understand that he _wasn't_ supposed to run off alone?

Notonly that, he smelled of sour milk for a whole week and for what, a simple act of immaturity!

Being the only mature person of a team of superheroes was goddamn hard.

With that, he decided to be mature about the whole thing once again and went back to considering his options. He wondered if he could go after the trio, but disregarded the idea, having no knowledge of their location in the first place. He didn't want to wander around aimlessly in sewers. An attempt at communicating his mentor proved fruitless, which told him that the situation hadn't changed much since he was knocked out.

A strain of thought about his bed and _pretending none of this happened _glided across his mind, but his pride as an Atlantean and as the King of Atlantis' student quickly devoured it; being a sitting duck was out of option since he _was_ a hero and the team leader and all.

Perhaps scouting was the best choice as he had little knowledge to actually formulate a plan. The thought of Black Canary and his two crazed team members crossed his mind; whatever knocked the Atlantean out got him good, or at least better than it got those three.

He uttered a small sigh and went on his way.

* * *

><p>"Come on, kid." She spoke. "That's mean. I'm hungry."<p>

Robin groaned. "Shut the fuck up, will you?"

"Manners, kid, manners."

Things were pretty easy for you if your father was the richest man of the country and thus, things were easy for Richard Grayson. On the other hand, things were never easy for the Boy Wonder, who occasionally had crazy clowns running after him and less crazy guys trying to freeze him with high-tech weapons, and the worst of all, his mentor was the god of grouchiness-no, his mentor solely existed to provide life support to his angst. A look from the said mentor could turn the loveliest of flowers into something that would make Kurt Cobain proud.

Now there no longer was a clear line between the two; Robin was Richard Grayson, Richard Grayson was Robin and the truth was crystal clear. It was a foreign feeling to the thirteen year old, who was used to switch back and forth between the line of light and dark, of day and night. Now that the line was erased, would that make it dawn or dusk?

_If you want to keep your identity intact. _He wasn't quite sure if there was anyone left to care who the hell he was anymore, which all in all neutralized the threat the physicist posed, though he found himself _wishing _there were people to care.

(Preferably those he cared about.)

The physicist's statement implied many things. _I know you can't do shit to me. There are normal people out there. I'm a crazy bitch who cares about nothing but my crazy project even when I'm surrounded by zombified people._

Life was hard for _both_ Richard Grayson and Robin now.

"Yeah, how about some food?" The woman was saying as Robin ran the car engine. "Aren't you hungry?"

He didn't answer. Behind him, the alien fidgeted slightly, though she too refused to speak for entirely different reasons.

Camelia uttered an exaggerated sigh. "Don't be so butthurt."

He was annoyed to the extent that he hit the gas a little too harshly, which plunged his body into the seat and earned him a quiet yelp from Megan.

"I didn't," Was that her sixth or seventh cigarette? "approach you with _that_ kinda intention, kid. But I'm a scientist-I make use of what I have at hand."

"Right." He retorted through his clenched teeth. His palms were getting sweaty from grasping the steering wheel too tightly-or for some other reason that involved stress and anxiety.

"Come on kid, it's not like I raped you or anything." She deeply inhaled the smoke surrounding her. "Consider me a victim of circumstance, yeah?"

"Stop calling me a _kid_."

"Why?" Her eyebrows rose up high. "You see, _kid _written backwards is one letter away from being a homonym of your real name. Isn't that awesome?"

He groaned."Just. Shut. Up."

"You're afraid, aren't you?" She smirked. "Afraid that I'll spill out your super secret name for your green friend to hear. Honestly, your name isn't even _that _pretty-"

For the second-or was it the third? fourth?- time that day the tires screeched in pain and _oh_, he just knew he was one fucking step away from his border of patience and _sanity._

"_Listen._" He hissed through his teeth. The woman seemed to shrink under his glare, which thoroughly satisfied him. "If you say a word one more time, I swear I'll spill out your organs and fill your insides with candy _for_ _everyone to see._"

The physicist nostrils flared with what seemed to be rage, but it soon diminished under the weight of his glares.

He didn't know when he became so creative at creating bizarre methods of murder-he knew _how _far too well however. Just like he learned various styles of martial arts from who one could safely call _the best_, he learned, albeit unwillingly, how the kill from the best, from the finest criminals of damned _Gotham_. Whenever he went through a painful night, he would bury the memories of everything he witnessed deep inside his mind for Richard Grayson had no need for them; but never erase them for the Batman's protégé was required to memorize even the smallest of details. It wasn't like one could just forget various bloody parts of human body hung on gallows trees with sparkly ribbons and people laughing to death anyway.

And with that he hit the gas in glorious and very much welcomed silence.

"You know, being hungry makes you crabby."

He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it and then opened it again-_there had to be something horribly wrong with this woman. _"Do you have a death wish?"

"Not really, nope." Man, he probably sucked at the whole batglare and batrage stuff or something, right? It had gotta be it, right?

"Not everything I carry around is children safe." He hissed.

Then there appeared a sound. It wasn't horrifying or odd in the least, no, it was perfectly normal, brilliant and clear bells chiming in his ears. It was a sound of laughter.

And despite his brain loudly commanding him to not care, he felt a shiver run down his spine. Her laughter was melodic and somewhat pleasant, occasionally calming down only to agitate right back up again. He hadn't heard someone laugh ever since well, _that _happened, though it hadn't been that long, had it? He was just used to being surrounded by laughter. It wasn't that his mentor was the one to laugh, not quite; it was just that he was surrounded by laughter ever since the secret team stuff began.

"What's so funny?" He gritted his teeth. The woman had managed to annoy him to unexplainable levels _and _creep the fuck out of him in just three seconds.

Her laughter slowly diminished into quiet giggles. "The hero of all is threatening to kill me and dump my body into sewers. What's _not_ funny?"

He opened his mouth to answer, but his voice painfully got stuck in his throat. Wasn't she right? She was right, she was. What would he do to her? He wouldn't kill her, he _couldn't _kill her. How would he ever face Bruce? Was he even alive? Of course he was, he was the goddamn Batman for fuck's sake-

In the end, the only thing that ended up getting killed was his thoughts.

The car went on in silence. He didn't even glance at the woman beside him. He could feel her lips quirk upwards, hear imaginary sounds of laughter.

"Hey, green girl." She spoke lazily. "Mind giving me my secret stash from the first aid kid? I need my fix."

Robin didn't think Megan knew what on god's green earth she was talking about, but the alien complied anyway.

There was a short, quiet gasp he barely managed to hear. He glanced over his shoulder to see what had surprised the wounded alien (though seriously, she could be surprised at pretty much anything) but the only object he got a view of was the dirty white coloured first aid kit, which the alien was now attempting to hand over to Camelia.

Said physicist threw a soft, almost kind smile at the alien. "Thanks." And he shifted his focus on the road.

"_Nooooo…_" There was a highly annoying and headache-inducing groan. He glanced sideways to see just _what_ was in the damn kit and at that moment, he knew just what surprised the Martian so much.

"That's some first aid kit you got there." She chuckled in response. "Cops never really check it, ya know?"

The box carried everything but first aid tools. Needles, lighters, a few small glass bottles with no tags which held some substance he assumed to be morphine liquid (though he wasn't entirely sure on that), surgery tools that clearly weren't children safe or blunt and a goddamn_ pistol_. He recognized it to be a Smith&Wesson, nine millimeter with about ten rounds, but the model name escaped him.

Some atmospheric physicist she was.

"No smoke!" She was saying. "_No smoke!_"

"Maybe you missed it." He spoke with a smirk. "Why don't you hand that over to me so I can see if there's really none left?"

There was what he recognized to be shock on the physicist's face for mere seconds, before it too turned into a smirk. "Heh." She didn't appear to show any form of resistance, which surprised him greatly; he had already formed plans in case she decided to pick the weapon up. Some of which involved a punch or two, but that was an entirely different story.

The woman complied; closed _the_ _first aid kit_ and almost politely put it on his lap.

"Can we please go visit a market or something?" She whined. "I need my smoke."

"Heroes don't steal. Don't you know that?"

She raised one eyebrow. "A zombie apocalypse is worthless if you, well, don't raid anywhere."

He rolled his eyes in response. "The more you speak the less I believe you're a physicist."

"Well, I'm wearing a god damn coat?"

"Do you ever think before you speak?" He retorted, unamused.

"Yeah, well, I see a market over there." She spoke. "Pull over, kid."

Despite his protests earlier, he complied. Not only he was freaking hungry, he had also managed to calm his conscience down by telling himself that he would come back and pay-he would, after everything was over and hopefully back to normal. (And he thoroughly hoped this would shut the so-called physicist up.)

He turned behind and dropped the crazy woman's secret stash on the ground just next to the Martian who still laid on the seat, the physicist shrugged in response-that would be pretty hard to retrieve, he mused.

"Stop." He commanded when Camelia made a move to leave the car. The woman faced him with a rough move, her brows furrowed in confusion.

She understood what he was trying to do but it was already a few seconds too late; Robin was quite proud of his agility (though it had little to do with what he had just done) and had managed to bind her to the car door with a bat-cuff, at which she now stared, before the woman even thought of noticing.

"That'll do." He threw a smirk at her and left the car before she could utter a retort and probably a few nice words directed at him.

He glanced around wearily. No one was in his sight-one of the reasons why he agreed to stop. There hadn't been even a single person in his sight ever since the physicist appeared; while he refused to voice his thoughts, he could feel a sense of dread creeping over his mind.

He had to get rid of her, he did. He just didn't know how he was supposed to do such a thing without crossing _that _boundary. Everything about the crazy whore screamed _Look at me, I'm suspicious! _from the way she stole quick glances at him to the whole lack of zombies around. But it wasn't like he could deem her guilty just by her personality alone; he had met far too many crazy assholes in his lifetime and not all of them were on a conquest to conquer the damn world. In fact, he could understandably state that almost ninety percent of the hero community was pretty damn crazy in its own right-keeping your sanity intact was incredibly hard in his line of business, especially since the remaining crazy asshole population was mostly trying to drive heroes even crazier day after day.

A sound behind him announced that Megan had decided to follow him. He didn't turn behind to face her, though he wasn't entirely sure why.

"Camelia says she wants Camel, uh..." There was a silence as the girl pondered for a bit. "Camel full...flavor?"

He groaned. Now he was her errand boy?

"Yeah, whatever."

There was no sound of steps coming from behind him, the alien was probably and reasonably flying, he noted. He was just turning around to tell her that there was no need for her to bother accompanying him since she wasn't exactly a big help and something along those lines when he saw her serious, _dead _serious expression coming at him full force-what, was there something _that _horrid on his face?

"Robin." She inhaled deeply. Her face was deeply stained with tears, but her chocolate eyes bore no sign of them. "I have to say something."

It was kind of funny how he felt little regret about his actions towards the alien girl. Cruel, yet somehow funny, and somehow unfitting for the unusually bright and cheerful bird, whose demeanor would contrast that of his mentor's greatly. "'Kay."

She seemed to be lost in thought for a bit, her brows knitted and her lips sealed tightly. And he waited patiently, though, as one certain crazy physicist would say, it wasn't the smartest thing to do in a zombie apocalypse now, was it?

"I'm sorry." The alien exclaimed loudly.

Oh, well he sure as hell didn't know how to react to _that. _He wasn't exactly good with girls in the first place.

"Please forgive me." The alien continued, her words sounded more like commands than words of apology with the way she spat them out. "I…promise I'll try harder next time."

"Megan, I-"

"I'll-I'll go get food."

He opened his mouth to reply, but was immediately surprised at the lack of words his brain produced for him to speak. The alien quickly floated away, keeping her face away from his sight-it didn't take a genius to know why. He simply stood there and let her float away; he had with some ironic twist ended up wishing that the alien would let _him_ accompany _her_.

With the way things were at that moment, he might as well turn gay as Artemis claimed him to be. He just desperately sucked when it came to girls, didn't he? Maybe he would have better luck with boys.

A quick glance over his shoulder told him that the alien had already gotten inside the little convenience store. The owner probably didn't bother to at least lock the damn door-the owner was probably too zombified for that. The Honda was in his sight and just a few steps away, he could see the physicist cheekily smirking at him. With a sigh he decided to put the whole messiness of the situation aside and follow the alien.

He had just taken his first step towards the little store when a voice came from behind him. "Hey, you an idiot? Give the green girl some space! Space. Alien. Geddit?"

As long as he was not in her range of shouting, he was all good.

The convenience store was dim-lit, fairly dusty and mighty crowded with every kind of crap stuffed up on shelves; at least twenty kind of weird named candies (one of which had a smiling strawberry raping other kind of fruits on it-oh _the horror_), inflatable toasts and bacon jam. The place definitely wasn't meant for the ones like Bruce Wayne, he mused with a smirk, but he would be lying if he said that bacon jam jar didn't look incredibly delicious to him right now.

"Robin?"

What the hell was those hand-shaped plushies over there? "Yeah?"

"I found sunglasses."

Megan floated right before what he assumed was the cashier's desk, which was rather modest and bland compared to the rest of the store. A portrait of an old Asian man posing in a fashion that closely resembled _Mona Lisa _hung on the wall right behind and smiled brightly at him.

The alien had indeed found a pair of sunglasses-cheap plastic with neon green frames, but he wasn't exactly in a position to complain. He offered a grateful smile as he took the object and put it over his eyes.

"There are other coloured ones over there if you want."

"Nah, I'm cool. Green brings out my inner beauty." Was he being a real douchebag by treating her like he never threw those words at her in the first place? He wondered.

The alien chuckled, it came out rather tired, somehow unwilling. "Your eye color is very pretty."

Well, now that wasn't a compliment he heard every day. "Thanks, Miss M-"

_Crash. _The alien tensed up in a nanosecond-that was all he needed to see to know that she was ready for whatever was now coming at the two young heroes. He didn't even notice his body taking a fighting stance; it was purely an act on instinct. A man; brown suit, forties or fifties, graying hair. _Too slow. Not trained. _He plunged towards the bird, what appeared to be some sort of bat -a baseball bat- held in a death grip in his hands, aiming directly for the thirteen year old's head.

He ducked beneath the old man's haphazard swing and kicked him clean off the ground with a swift move. There was a scream which definitely didn't belong to the alien behind him-his sunglasses-hidden gaze quickly located its source to be a girl, probably a few years older than him with ebony bed hair, bloodstained high school uniform and a horrified, teary expression, what he determined to be a crowbar grasped tightly in her hands.

"JULIA!" The old man roared with all his might.

_He speaks. _A quick glance at the alien proved that he wasn't dreaming. "Wait, you-"

"Stop fucking right there!"

_Cling. _It was the sound of a gun reloading, he couldn't possibly mistake that sound. "Get the hell away from him!"

He straightened his posture. A woman, a female cop clad in full uniform with short platinum blond hair and a deadly gaze, pointed a Glock right at his heart and if there was anything her posture told him, it was that she was not afraid to shoot.

"Whoah whoah, wait!" Great, now he was beginning to sound like that crazy physicist!

"They..." The high schooler spoke, her expression soothing visibly. "Normal people..." Her voice had a soft, almost feathery touch to it.

"Yeah." He spoke. "Normal people. That's us."

"Tell that to the one behind you!" The policewoman roared, cocking her gun at Megan's direction.

_Crap. _He didn't dare to do anything but steal a quick glance sideways-and what he saw immediately put a smirk on his lips.

"Uh..." Megan spoke softly. "Um..."

The Martian no longer floated, she was on her feet trying to keep her balance with the help of the desk behind her. Her skin colour had turned into a sickly, pale tone of grey-if anything she looked like she was going to die from blood loss, her red hair greatly contrasted her skin colour and gave her a ghoul-like appearance, but she looked human nonetheless.

"Just put that down, 'kay?" He pretended to direct his smirk at her and not at his alien companion, his blue eyes hidden from their unwanted guests' sight. "We don't mean harm." The man before him uttered a painful groan that suspiciously sounded like _my back._

"The food here is ours." The cop hissed through her teeth.

"Well, that's fine. That's cool. We'll leave." Without hopefully revealing themselves to be fucking heroes in civilian clothing if possible.

"Don't even take a fucking single step, brat!"

_God damned cops._

"Okay, okay! Please calm down."

"Stay right where you-"

_Cling._

"Hey kid, where's my fix?"

_God damned everything._

"Something came up, sorry." He replied casually.

_I want to quit everything and live the rest of my life as a bald monk in bright orange robes on top of some mountain in Tibet._

* * *

><p>Kaldur, I wouldn't do that if I were you.<em><br>_


	8. Curtain Raiser

_Don't you just love that feeling when it's summer and your apparently sick laptop has traveled far more than you?_

_Yes, I'm alive. I know, I'm surprised too._

_Disclaimer : I disclaim. _

_Edit : Messed up those seperater line thingies. I noob.  
><em>

* * *

><p><em>One, two, police<br>Three, four, officer  
>Five, six, old witch<br>Seven, eight, good night!  
>Nine, ten, good-bye!<em>

VII. Curtain Raiser_  
><em>

_Click-clack._

So noisy, it was so noisy. It didn't matter. Must not let go. He must not let go.

_Click-clack. Click. Clack._

_Bro, mind holdin' onto that?_

Was it morning already? How odd, how unusual. He didn't smell anything burnt; no alluring aroma of French pancakes, no water flowing through the sink. No laughter. Was Megan asleep? He couldn't even remember his alarm clock going off with a familiar, offbeat Bieber tune, gleefully given to him by Wally.

Ah, perhaps his alarm clock hadn't rang yet? He had heard about this condition before; _waking up in the middle of the night for no damn reason_, it was called-maybe it was contagious, he mused.

_Hey…_

It was fine. He would just continue to sleep; just continue to savor each and every moment of this fragile peace. It wasn't like this when he was back in that place, not at all. There were no longer history of Ottoman or poisonous mushroom lectures occupying his dreams ever since he was out of that place; he considered getting out of there to be the best decision he had ever made in his life (which also happened to be the _only _decision he had ever made in his life, but such depressing things did not bother his mind at the moment). Ever since he was out of that place all was silence, solemnity, white; a heaven not even he himself occupied. Yet, even that perfect silence would sometimes crack away and give way to a very familiar face of the moon, those would be the nights he would unknowingly suffer from _waking up in the middle of the night for no god damn reason _and blame it on Wally.

_I think the kid's awake…_

Superboy hadn't seen much of what life offered in the past few months and despite that, there were many, many things he came to hate. Sure, he loved carrots, he loved well-cooked beef and Saturday morning cartoons and watching his two certain teammates argue about irrelevant, stupid things he couldn't even hope to come up with. Black Canary would often wipe the floor with him and he would be angry about it for the rest of the week, Batman had such a presence even he sometimes felt shrunken before it and whenever a blue-red clad man made his appearance for whatever reason, Superboy would find himself focused on the ground and nothing else. On top of that he despised broccolis. Normal civilians were so frustrating with their odd reactions. He still didn't know what was so great about computers. Physical contact was so weird if it didn't involve punching, his fine hairs would stand on end whenever someone did so little as to pat him on the back.

And now this unknown male was performing an act he hated far more than being floors wipe. He was poking him. Superboy hated getting poked.

_Nah, he ain't budging…_

He opened his mouth to speak, but decided to check who it was, just in case. He was already bad with everything starting with the word _social_, for all he knew it could be someone related to the League, which meant related to Superman in some way, which meant there was a chance of whoever the hell this was complaining to the big blue man and…

Opening his dark blue eyes even so slightly provided him nothing more than a blurry view of a sky-it was already morning, though still considerably grey and gloomy- and one heck of a headache. He groaned slowly. He hated headaches.

He decided to do a damage check, just like Black Canary taught him (it wasn't like it was an easy feat to hurt the clone Kryptonian, but it was mandatory knowledge for all superheroes). His limbs were where they were supposed to be. He wasn't puking blood. He didn't have any problems with breathing. His hands…There was something in his right hand, secured tightly, but he wasn't sure what and his senses didn't provide him more than a sticky, weird dampness, all too unfamiliar to the sixteen weeks old clone.

As his sight adjusted to the level of light at the speed of a snail, a very, very sick, poor snail, he uttered another groan, his eyes fixated on the ever-expanding sky. _Cumulus congestus_, commonly known as suffocating, grey clouds of great sizes, scattered all around the blue sky like a blanket, rejoicing their new rule over the blue sky without a care about what went below them-it wasn't like they could care even if they wanted to, they were just visible masses of water droplets suspended in the atmosphere.

Something at the back of his mind kept nagging at him, taking small bites out of his thoughts, but he wasn't sure what. Sure, he had forgotten to bring an umbrella -in fact he didn't have one in the first place-when a downpour was quite likely and he despised getting wet. But he knew it wasn't that, something was just odd. Was he again the poor victim of Wally's ill-mannered jokes? Just what had he done this time-

"Hey, kid." Something entered his sight, blocking his view of the sky greatly. It was a man of middle ages, somewhere between 35 and 40. One of his front teeth was missing. Did he work for the League? Had the League finally decided to send someone to cook and clean for the teenagers, despite Megan's pleas?

He eyed the man's face thoroughly. A nose too big for his dirty face, an uneven mustache. He didn't look anywhere near the Bat's standards of _trustable, _but then again Superboy was somewhat sure he himself wasn't anywhere near those standards_. _And now, the man was giving him the smile of his life. For some reason, the clone was strongly reminded of those Norwegian fishermen in Neutrogena short movies made for advertisement purposes.

"You feelin' good?" The man asked with a somewhat fatherly, happy voice. His breath smelled of bread and some other substance he couldn't recognize. "Anywhere hurts?"

"I'm…" He uttered, eyes wide, his dry throat painfully revolting in response. "…not in the mountain."

The man raised his eyebrows as his smile faded away, leaving only traces behind; perhaps his face just had a cheerful composure. "No mountain 'ere, kid. You scared us real good there though, jumpin' out of sewers like that."

There was another man just one meter ahead. He slowly rose up to sitting position; his mind threatened to black out in return, but he ignored it. Even though they were in some green area-some park or forest or water-surrounded withred maples and eastern white oaks, the other man was sitting in front of a campfire, apparently cooking something. Wasn't that something wrong to do? There was a small shack just a few meters away, with what appeared to be working tools laid before it. He gave the clone a crooked smile when their eyes met, "Hi there." His words were somewhat dignified compared to the fisherman-like man. Superboy nodded slowly in response. "Would you like something to eat?"

He stared blankly at the man. Where was he? What the hell was he doing here? They were going through some tunnel and…

"That your father?" The big-nosed man stretched out his arms with a groan. "You wouldn't let go o' him whatever we did. It was harsh work carryin' you two all the way 'ere, I tell ya!"

_Father? _Superboy didn't have a father. Just what on earth was he-He followed the man's gaze all the way to his right.

Something bright and orange entered his vision-and he remembered.

His eyes were blank and watery, his expression dead and unnatural, his left arm bloody and tightly secured in the clone's hand. It was the worker Superboy tried to save. One could have thought he was dead, but the clone did not as he heard his faint heartbeats and shallow breathing, noticed the slight fluttering of his eyeballs. He seemed to suffer from a weak muscle spasm for whatever reason, but that wasn't what was wrong with him. He removed his hand slowly and ignored the gasp he earned from the man sitting next to him.

Zombie citizens. A hell out of sewer water.

His arm, just where he was held by the clone, was quite literally squished.

* * *

><p>"<em>Something came up, sorry."<em>

_Damn._

He moved. For a second he actually doubted he wouldn't be shot, but Megan's composure told him she was ready to defend him, anytime, as much as her powers allowed. He had to take matters at hand before they got far too ugly for his taste, - _"GYAH!"-, _the scream echoed in the small, dusty store and the policewoman, clearly having no idea of the situation anymore, met the ground with a loud thud. He had moved within a heartbeat, using his momentum to deliver a, rather glorious he might say, hit to the lady's stomach, which had almost caused her to lose her grasp on her gun, followed by a swift low kick which swept her off her feet. His left hand had already took a hold of her gun even before she met the ground, throwing it towards hopefully where Megan stood, while his right got a hold of Camelia's pistol the moment he was standing remotely straight. The gun landed on the ground with a loud _clash_.

She had seen him. She had seen him coming towards her, her eyes growing bigger with each step. She couldn't do anything. He saw fear deep within the physicist's eyes; he could recognize fear the moment he laid eyes on it.

And it satisfied him.

"URGH!" The old man made a desperate attempt to secure the policewoman's gun. It was almost an amateur mistake on Robin's part. Before he could pry his eyes away from the physicist's, which had locked onto his in a furious, belittling gaze, Megan threw herself on her knees and got a hold of the gun. "Please _stop!_"

He stood there, his hand keeping the gun on his shoulder with little force, the physicist's arm extending where it ended; her sweaty hand came in contact with his, quietly refusing to let go with a glare. There was a meek, almost scared war cry; the highschooler ran aiming directly for his head, crowbar raised. It didn't take much effort to receive her blow; he didn't even spare a sunglasses-hidden glance as his hand embraced her makeshift weapon with little to no pain. The girl attempted to pull her weapon back with little strength, but gave up rather quick, resorting to get away from the teenager until her back met a pale colored wall.

His fingers around the gun tightened, in a quiet command for the physicist to let go. Glaring at her from above his glasses-or rather, replying to her glare- was quite an easy feat as the woman was taller than him. There was an abrupt silence, accompanied by short groans and gasps coming from the old man behind him, until it finally appeared to have clicked in the physicist's head that action was finally over.

The physicist's lips stretched into a smile that didn't reflect in her eyes. She let go of the weapon, taking a quiet step back from the bird.

He uttered a sigh. The policewoman before his feet, still trying to reorder her breaths, seemed to shake, what he decided to be fear etched in her features. She wasn't like that until he got a hold of a weapon, he mused. She had no idea what he was actually capable of.

"Okay." He spoke. The crowbar in his hand met the ground with a resonating _clang; _a small yelp from the highschool girl reached his ears in response. He quickly emptied the gun, stuffing the bullets into his pocket before letting go of the gun-there was another _clang _and another yelp. He stepped on it just in case the cop decided to do something funny. "Can we all stop now?"

* * *

><p>Kaldur was the good boy of the team. He took pride in that; he saw no need to be rebellious or pretentious, what good would they bring to him as a hero and as the King's student? Even though he was usually the center of certain jokes he would rather not hear, he could live with that. In fact, he believed with his whole heart that his teammates would, sooner or later, come to understand just how right he was. Especially a certain speedster.<p>

Superboy's extra pair of boots were a size small for him. He was just ready to go and rescue whoever necessary when he noticed the sparkling ground; stepping on whatever in Neptune's name that was didn't seem like a brilliant idea. He could have gone with his usual sandals but he was a messy walker, usually bothered by little stones that somehow found their way under his feet.

And that was how the fish-boy ended up walking into the city in combat boots.

The weather was heavy, he could even feel the weight on his nerves. Yet he couldn't smell rain in the air which struck him quite odd. He felt somewhat annoyed about not being able to ride anything; the mountain's system ran completely on computer commands (it was said Batman knew how to operate them even during power outage, but that was just a myth) which kept his motorbike safe and away from his grasp.

_Not even a single soul._

Even though it limited his movements greatly, he was glad about not riding anything considerably loud. There was not even a single human being around, not even tiniest bits of usual urban noise. It greatly bothered him. He couldn't imagine just what horrors he would attract if he made too much noise.

As he walked, his nerves kept getting more and more strained. He found himself desperately searching for someone's silhouette, shadow, however he claimed to be actually bothered by crowded places. The only sounds he could hear was his breathing, which was, for some reason, getting faster and faster and a grim crushing sound beneath his feet. His hands twitched every time he thought he heard a step; he could barely keep himself from grasping his weapons.

The sky was getting heavier and heavier. It was as if every single person in the town evacuated the place without taking any of their belongings; the shops were open, albeit not lit due to power outage. The only thing missing from the usual picture were humans. Everything and everyone were dead without corpses left behind.

About fifteen minutes later, he heard a sound. _Tick. Tack. Tick. _He thought it was his mind playing an eerie game at first, but his vision proved him wrong.

It was a crippled, old lady just a few meters ahead. She was using something he could not name, something that closely resembled a table to him, to walk. It was somebody, a person.

Even though he knew he was supposed to be relieved, he was still creeped the fuck out.

"Miss…Miss?" He shouted. The woman did not respond, maybe she did not hear him? He quickly dashed to enter her line of vision. "Miss?"

She did not respond. She didn't even spare a glance. She just kept on walking until she was just in front of him and then just walked past him with a very slow maneuver. Kaldur resorted to try again, only to get the same reaction. It was as if he wasn't there. The thought made him shudder greatly.

_What is going on?_

The woman trotted away, oblivious to his thoughts, at her own pace.

* * *

><p>I seem to get <em>his <em>and _her _mixed. I'm sad to say that I have not double-checked this. Also, zombies aren't the main course. They're just side dishes. And first chapters are really cringe-worthy...

As always, any kind of constructive criticism/flames/comments are welcome. I'll even try to be cute so please do review. Like...Like..._CLICKY CLICKY PUHLEEZ YAY XD~_


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